A memorial of Horatio Greenough, consisting of a memoir, selections from his writings, and tributes to his genius

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CONSISTING OF A MEMOIR SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS
AND TRIBUTES TO HIS GENIUS

BY

HENRY T TUCKERMAN

•

• • >

• , ■ • • • .

NEW YORK:

. • . • . .

G. P, PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE,

1853.

*

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853,

BY G. P. PUTNAM & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern

District of New York.

R. Craighead, Printer,
53 Vesey Str& t.

€wUnis.

Memoir,

Catalogue op "Works,

pa ob
9

54

ESSAYS

^esthetics at "washington,
Social Theories,
American Art,
American Architecture, ,
Kelatiye and Independent Beauty,
The Trumbull Gallery, .
Burke on The Beautiful,
Criticism in Search of Beauty,
Structure and Organization, .
The Cooper Monument, .

Fashion,

An Artist's Creed, .
Fragments, ....

61

95

105

111

131
H6
151
157
170
184
168
192
199

vi Contents.

TRIBUTES.

PAGE

Essay on the Statue of Washington, by A. H. Everett, . 215
A Visit to Greenough's Studio, from " Scenes and Thoughts

in Europe," 226

Meeting of Artists at Rome, . . . . . . . 232

To the Group of The Angel and Child, by "Washington

Allston, 238

To the Same, 239

To the Statue of Medora, by Richard H. Dana, . . . 240

To the Statue of Washington, by H. T. Tuckerman, . . 241

To the Chanting Cherubs, by Richard H. Dana, . . . 243
Monody on the Death of Horatio Greexough, by George

H. Calvert, . 244

Btarinl

M E M I R.

Although the creations of the artist are his best monument,
when the spirit in which he works transcends the limits of a
special vocation, and associates him with the progress of society,
and the happiness of his friends, a catalogue raisonne of what
he has left in marble or colors, we feel to be an incomplete
record of his life. The recent death of our earliest sculptor has
caused so wide and sincere a grief that it becomes not less a
sacred duty than a melancholy pleasure to trace his career,
gather up the tributes to his genius, and endeavor to delineate
the features of his character ; and it is at the request of those
more dear to him, as well as from a vivid sentiment of affection
and regret, that I have prepared this inadequate memorial of

A life that all the muses decked

"With gifts of grace that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,

All subtilizing intellect:

10 Memoir.

Heart-affluence in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry ;
The critic clearness of an eye,

That saw throucrh all the Muses' walk :

Ko longer caring to embalm

In dying songs or dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.*

Horatio Greenough was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
September 6, 1805. His father belonged to that respected
class of merchants whose integrity, enterprise, and intelligence,
half a century ago, justly gave them a degree of consideration
which is almost unknown at the present day. Comparatively
few in number, and active in the political and social life of the
town, they almost created public opinion, and were remarkable
for individuality of character not less than a tone of mind above
and beyond the mere spirit of trade. This was evinced in the
careful manner in which their children were brought up, and the
intellectual privileges afforded them, the sacred interest attached
to home, and the superiority of the local schools. The mother
of Greenough is a native of Massachusetts, endowed with the
conscientious affection and vigorous intellect that are so honor-
able a distinction of the genuine New England matron. He
was one of several children, and shared with them the educa-

* Tennyson's In Memoriam.

Memoir. 11

tion both of public and private seminaries, and of the domestic
circle.

The instinct of genius discovers amid circumstances appa-
rently inauspicious, the means and incentives for its develop-
ment. In the community where Greenough was born and
passed his early years, there existed a prevalent taste and more
than one noble example to encourage the votary of letters ;
Stuart's masterpieces, family portraits by Copley, a few choice
originals and many fine copies from the old masters, as well as
the presence of native artists of more or less skill and fame,
offered a stimulus to the cultivation of drawing and painting;
the system of popular education, and the intellectual tone of
society, were also highly favorable to individual culture in its
general relations ; but the art of modelling in clay was rarely if
ever practised, the specimens of sculpture were few, and only
a strong natural bias could have so early directed Greenough's
aspirations towards the art. Having a decided sense of form,
a love of imitating it, and a mechanical aptitude which kept
his knife, pencil, and scissors continually active, he employed
hours in carving, drawing, and moulding toys, faces, and wea-
pons, by way of amusing himself and his comrades. I have
seen a head evidently taken from an old Roman coin, executed
upon a bit of compact plaster about the size of a penny, admi-
rably cut by Greenough with a penknife and common nail,
while a schoolboy, seated upon the door-step of one of his
neighbors. The lady who observed this achievement, pre-
served the little medal with religious care ; and was the first to

12 Memoir.

give the young sculptor a commission. It was for her that he
executed the beautiful ideal bust of the Genius of Love. This
propensity soon took a higher range. It was encouraged
by the mechanics and professional men around him, whose
good-will his agreeable manners and obvious genius propi-
tiated. One kind artisan taught him the use of fine tools; a
stone-cutter, of more than ordinary taste, instructed him to
wield a chisel ; benevolent librarians allowed him the use of
plates, casts, and manuals ; a physician gave him access to
anatomical designs and illustrations ; and Binon, a French
artist, known by his bust of John Adams in Faneuil Hall, Bos-
ton, encouraged him to model at his side. Thus, as a mere
schoolboy, did Greenough glean the rudiments of an artistic
education without formal initiation. With eclectic wisdom he
sought and found the aid he required, while exploring the
streets of his native town ; one day he might be seen
poring over a folio, or contemplating a plaster copy of a
famous statue ; and, on another, exercising his mechanical
ingenuity at the office of Solomon Willard, whose family name
yet stamps, with traditional value, many an old dial-plate in
New England ; now he eagerly watches Alpheus Cary as he
puts the finishing touch to a cherub's head on a tombstone ;
and, again, he stands a respectful devotee before Shaw or
Coggswell, waiting for some treasured volume on the process
or the results of his favorite art, from the shelves of Harvard
and the Athenaeum. Some of his juvenile triumphs are still
remembered by his playmates — especially a pistol ornamented

Memoir. 13

with relievo flowers in lead, a series of carriages moulded in
bee's-wax, scores of wooden daggers tastefully carved, a lion
coucbant, modelled with a spoon from a pound of butter, to
astonish his mother's guests at tea, elaborate card-paper plans
for estates, and, as a climax to these childish yet graceful expe-
riments, a little figure of Penn cut in chalk from an engraving
of his statue in the Port-Folio.

There is no truth more sustained by the facts of conscious-
ness, than that the mind assimilates only its legitimate nutriment.
The artist, the hero, and the lover seem hardly conscious of
any element of life, save that which ministers to their idiosyn-
crasy ; and it is in these law r s of character, and not in any external
appliances, that we must seek a true philosophy of life. The
real-estate broker, as he passed the home of the young sculptor,
saw but a certain number of feet of ground, and perchance
speculated on its value; but the ardent gaze of the boy was
only conscious of a statue of Phocion that stood in the garden.
The mystery of that figure, the process of its creation, the
law of its design, were the great problems of his dawning intel-
ligence; he was sensible of a relation to the sphere of human
activity represented by that image. It was more to him than
the animated forms in the street, more than the printed charac-
ters of his hornbook, more than an academic degree. It was
a nucleus for his reveries, a hint to his ingenuity, a prophecy
of his life. It kept bright and palpable to his young imagina-
tion the idea of being a sculptor, and though the language of
State St. Long Wharf, and even the old South Church gave no

14 Memoir.

confirmation to the oracle, — to him its silent eloquence was
none the less impressive, for his nature had an element of the
Greek as well as the Puritan, which asserted itself in spite of
time and place.

This strong tendency for art did not, however, alone charac-
terize his mind. The graces of scholarship were equally-
native. At school and college he excelled in the classics, and
exhibited a command of language and perception of the
beauties of expression, such as usually indicate the future orator
and poet. It is recorded that no classmate excelled him in
verbal memory ; and when quite a boy, be used to recite a
thousand lines of English verse, at a time, without error or
hesitation. Fortunately, too, his physical development kept
pace with his mental activity. He was a proficient in all
manly exercises. Indeed, that peculiar zest of action which
belongs to organizations at once nervous and muscular, never
ceased to inspire him. A good horseman, swimmer, pedestrian
— he seemed to enjoy his sensitive and athletic, not less than
his mental being; and when, at the age of sixteen, he entered
Harvard University, in appearance and intellectual promise, he
was the ideal of a gifted youth. It is remarkable that while
his family had given no direct encouragement to his artistic
plans, and made it a condition of their future realization, that
he should pass through the usual academic training, he found
at Cambridge, the highest and most valuable inspiration as a
votary of art, yet experienced. There, at the house of Mr.
Dana, he became acquainted with Washington Allston, who

Memoir. 15

soon, and, as it were, by the law of nature, became his master ;
not that there was any recognised connexion of the kind be-
tween them, but an affinity of genius, a mutual worship of the
beautiful, and an earnest purpose quite apart from and above
those around them, — bound together in the highest sympathy,
the mature, religious artist, and the enthusiastic youth.
Lono* afterwards when applied to for some biographical data,
he answered ; " A note to Allston's life might tell all of me that
is essential." In one of his letters from Italy, at a later period,
he declares — " Allston was to me a father in what concerned my
progress of every kind. He taught me first how to discrimi-
nate, how to think, how to feel. Before I knew him I felt
strongly but blindly, and if I should never pass mediocrity, I
should attribute it to my absence from him, so adapted did he
seem to kindle and enlighten me, making me no longer myself,
but, as it were, an emanation from his own soul ;" and on his last
return to America, he said with great emotion to a friend, that
the only thought which cast a shadow over his heart, was that
Allston was no more.

A classmate, with whom he was intimate, intended to become
a physician, and, while an undergraduate, began his medical
inquiries. The two young men, one for a professional, and the
other for an artistic object, engaged with zeal in anatomical
investigations. The sister of this college friend of Greenough,
remembers the ardor and mutual interest with which they
carried on this pursuit, — often bringing anatomical preparations
to the house, and always impatient to return to Cambridge

1G Memoir.

before the evening of their weekly holiday, in order to hear
Allston's conversation. It was a habit with him to visit his
friend Edmund Dana on Saturdays ; the two students occupied
rooms in the house of the latter gentleman, whom they always
called " the master," on account of his serene wisdom and fine
perception in art and letters; and to hear the two men, whom
they most deeply reverenced, talk, was to them at once inspira-
tion and knowledge beyond the teachings of the University —
the invaluable episode of their academic life.

It was rare in those early days and in that latitude to find a
genuine lover of art; as a career the practical and commercial
spirit of the people repudiated it ; and among the educated, pro-
fessional life combined with the honors of literature and states-
manship, yielded almost the only prizes of ambition. Artists were
therefore comparatively isolated ; and we can readily imagine the
pleasure with which a painter at once so benign and highly en-
dowed as Allston would welcome to his own sphere another with
a mind so finely tempered and prophetic of excellence as Green-
ough. Accordingly the best hours of the latter's college-life
were those passed with Allston ; from him he caught the most
elevated ideal of art, a sense of its dignity, a courage to face
its inevitable discipline, and a faith in its great rewards. This
intercourse gave consistency to Greenough's aims and new
vigor to his resolution ; it was also a source of the highest im-
mediate enjoyment. A few perhaps of the friends of either
yet recall the scene presented, on a moonlight evening of sum-
mer, when they were the central figures of a charmed gro up

Memoir. 1*7

on the piazza, — around them the glimmering foliage, dark sward,
and bright firmament ; — the spiritual countenance and long sil-
very hair of Allston, wearing the semblance of a bard or prophet,
and the tall agile figure and radiant face of his young disciple,
both intent upon a genial theme. Those hours were memora-
ble to the casual auditors ; and to Greenough they were
fraught with destiny. His nature was essentially sympathetic ;
example and personal communion taught him infinitely more
than books. He required heat as well as light to inform and
mould his mind, and the friendship and conversation of such
an artist as our great painter, at this most susceptible epoch
of his life, could not but give a new impetus and a sanction to
his genius.

There was an exuberance and variety in his youthful mind
that charmed elder companions, and awoke in them a pro-
phetic interest. The routine of college life was, indeed, subor-
dinate, in his estimation, to the practice of art and the enjoy-
ment of gifted society ; and yet, by virtue of a natural aptitude
and an honorable spirit, he fulfilled the allotted tasks with
eminent fidelity, and excelled in all branches save mathema-
tics, for which he had an instinctive dislike. In the intervals
of these studies he cultivated his private tastes with an assi-
duity that surprised his most intimate associates. One of
these, now a venerable man, has told me, with a glow of affec-
tionate pride, of a landscape that Greenough painted while
an under-graduate, of some beautiful sonnets he then com-
posed, and of an excellent fac-simile he wrought of a bust of

2*

18 Memoir.

Napoleon. While such evidences of genius won for him the
high regard of his own, a handsome person, animated conversa-
tion, and graceful manners, rendered him a favorite with the
other sex ; yet amid the calls upon his time, and the constant
exercise of his powers, incident to such a position, the primary
direction of his mind never wavered. Sculpture was the art to
which he had long since resolved to dedicate his life ; and to
this were given the hours not absorbed by his college duties
and his friends. He modelled, at this period, a bust of Wash-
ington, from Stuart's portrait, and others of his own contempora-
ries, from life. A proposal for designs for the monument on
Bunker Hill having been issued, Greenough constructed a model
in wood which was at once selected by the committee, although
the prize they offered the successful competitor was never
bestowed upon him who was fully entitled to it. The interior
arrangement of the work was planned by another, but the form,
proportions, and style of the monument were adopted from
Greenough's model ; and the simple, majestic, and noble struc-
ture that designates the early battle field of the American
Revolution, is thus indissolubly associated with his name. His
preference for the obelisk seems to have been confirmed by
subsequent observation ; and the reasons he assigns for this
choice, in one of his papers on art, are certainly not less forcible
than just. In anticipation of his residence abroad, he also
began, while at college, the study of the Italian language, and
could speak it with considerable fluency months before he
embarked for Europe. Another instance of this facility in

Memoir. 19

acquiring a foreign tongue occurred many years later, when, on
the occasion of a visit to Graefenburg for the health of his
family, he became an excellent German scholar. Italian, how-
ever, continued to be his favorite language, and during the last
few days of his life, only its soft vowels escaped his fevered lips.
From diffidence he wished to avoid the delivery of his part,
which had not only been awarded but written ; and towards
the close of his senior year, with the approbation of the college
government, he availed himself of a favorable opportunity and
embarked for Marseilles. Thence he proceeded to Rome. It
was at that period uncommon for an American student of art
to take up his residence there ; and Greenough was the pio-
neer of his country's sculptors. He engaged with zeal in the
usual course of observation and practice, drawing and model-
ling from life at the Academy and from the antique at the
Vatican. His habits of self-denial and simple tastes were con-
firmed by this systematic discipline. " I began to study art in
Rome," he observes ; " until then I had rather amused myself
with clay and marble than studied. When I say that those
materials were familiar to my touch, I say all that I profited
by my boyish efforts. It was not until I had run through all
the galleries and studios of Rome, and had under my eye the
genial forms of Italy, that I began to feel Nature's value. I
had before adored her, but as a Persian does the sun, with my
face to the ground." Here he enjoyed the friendship of Thor-
waldsen, and his companion at this time was R. W. Weir, the
painter ; they occupied rooms in the house known as Claude's,

20 Memoir.

on the Pincian Hill. After long and severe application,
a severe illness induced by the malaria, so prostrated Green-
ough as to induce his return home ; and his faithful brother
artist not only watched over him abroad, but accompanied him
to the United States. The voyage completely restored his
health, and a visit of several months among his friends was not
unprofitably occupied in executing several busts of his distin-
guished countrymen. At Paris, also, he remained awhile to
execute a bust of Lafayette. " The bust of David," says
Cooper, in allusion to this work, " is like, it cannot be mis-
taken, but it is in his ordinary manner — heroic or poetical; on
the other hand, the bust of Greenough is the very man, and
should be dear to us in rjroportion as it is faithful. As Lafayette
himself expressed it, ' one is a French bust, the other an Ame-
rican.' " On his return to Italy, Greenough passed many
weeks at the quarries of Carrara, a fine school for the practical
details of statuary ; and then proceeded to Florence, where he
took up his abode. It was here, in the autumn of 1833, that I
first met him, and I quote from impressions soon after recorded :
" On one of the last afternoons preceding my embarkation, I
had sat a long hour opposite a striking, though by no means
faithful portrait of Greenough, while one of the fairest of his
kindred spoke fondly of him, and charged me with many a
message of love for the gifted absentee. On a table beneath
the picture stood one of the earliest products of his chisel. I
glanced from the countenance of the young sculptor, to the
evidence of his dawning genius ; I listened to the story of his

Memoir. 21

exile ; and thenceforth he was enshrined high and brightly
among the ideals of my memory. With rapid steps, therefore,
the morning after my arrival in Florence, I threaded the narrow
thoroughfare, passed the gigantic cathedral, nor turned aside
until, from the end of a long and quiet street, I discerned the
archway which led to the domicile of my countryman. Asso-
ciations arose within me, such as the time-hallowed and novel
objects around failed to inspire. There was a peculiar charm in
the idea of visiting the foreign studio of a countryman devoted
to the art of sculpture, to one who was fresh from the stirring
atmosphere of his native metropolis. Traversing the court and
stairway, I could but scan the huge fragments of marble that
lined them, ere entering a side door, I found myself in the pre-
sence of the artist. He was seated beside a platform, contem-
plating an unfinished model, which bore the impress of recent
moulding. In an adjoining apartment was the group of the
Guardian Angel and Child — the countenances already radiant
with distinctive and touching loveliness, and the limbs exhibit-
ing their perfect contour, although the more graceful and deli-
cate lines were as yet undeveloped. One by one I recognised
the various plaster casts about the room — mementos of his
former labors. My eye fell on a bust which awakened sea and
forest pictures — the spars of an elegant craft, the lofty figure of
a hunter, the dignified bearing of a mysterious pilot. It was
the physiognomy of Cooper. And yon original, arch-looking
gentleman \ Ah ! that can be no other than Francis Alexan-
der. Surely those Adonis-like ringlets, so daintily carved,

22 Memoir.

belong to one whom it is most pleasing to remember as the
writer of some exqui>ite verses under the signature of Roy.
No one can mistake the benevolent features of Lafavette, or
the expressive image of the noble pilgrim-bard ; or fail to linger
in the corridor, over the embodiment of one of his fairest crea-
tions — the figure of the dead Medora. In other studios of the
land I beheld a more numerous and imposing array ; but in
none could I discover more of that individuality of design and
execution which characterizes native intellectual results.

" Coleridge's favorite prescription for youthful atheism was
love ; on the same principle would we commend to the admi-
ration of the scoffer at a spiritual philosophy, the unwavering
and martyr-like progress of genius towards its legitimate end.
In this characteristic, the course of all gifted beings agrees.
They have a mission to fulfil ; and lured betimes, as they may
be, by the flowers of the wayside, and baffled awhile, as is the
destiny of man, by vicissitude — from first to last the native
impulse, the true direction, is everywhere discernible. In the
case of Greenough, this definiteness of aim, this solemnity of
determination, if we may so call it, is remarkably evident.
Often did he incur the penalty of tardiness, by lingering to
gaze at a wooden eagle which surmounted the gateway of an
old edifice he daily passed — thinking, as he told me, how beau-
tiful it must be to carve such a one.

" "When he arrived in Genoa he was yet in his minority.
He entered a church. A statue, more perfect than he had ever
beheld, met his eye. With wonder he saw hundreds pass it

Memoir. 23

by, without bestowing even a glance. He gazed in admiration
on the work of art, and marked the careless crowd, till a new
and painful train of thoughts was suggested. ' What !' he
soliloquized, ' are the multitude so accustomed to beautiful sta-
tues that even this fails to excite their passing notice ? How
presumptuous, then, in me, to hope to accomplish anything
worthy of the art !' He was deeply moved, as the distance
between himself and the goal he had fondly hoped to reach,
widened to his view ; and concealing himself among the rub-
bish of a palace-yard, the young and ardent exile sought relief
in tears. ' O genius !' I mused, going forth with this anecdote
fresh from his lips, - how mysterious thou art ! And yet how
identical are the characteristics of thy children ! Susceptible
and self-distrusting, and yet vividly conscious of high endow-
ments — slow to execute and quick to feel — pressing on amid
the winning voices of human allurements, or the wailing cry of
human weakness and want — as pilgrims bent on an errand of
more than earthly import, through a night of dimness and
trial, and yet ever beholding the star, hearing the angel-choir,
and hastening on to worship !'

" On one of the most beautiful evenings of my visit, I accom-
panied Greenough to the studio where he proposed to erect his
statue of Washington. It was a neat edifice ; which had for-
merly been used as a chapel ; and from its commodious size
and retired situation, seemed admirably adapted to his purpose.
The softened effulgence of an Italian twilight glimmered
through the high windows, and the quiet of the place was

24 Memoir.

invaded only by distant rural sounds and the murmur of the
nearest foliage in the evening breeze. There was that in the
scene and its suggestions, which gratified my imagination. I
thought of the long and soothing days of approaching summer,
which my companion would devote, in this solitary and plea-
sant retreat, to his noble enterprise. I silently rejoiced that the
blessed ministry of nature would be around him, to solace,
cheer, and inspire, when his energies were bending to their
glorious task: — that when weariness fell upon his spirit, he
could step at once into the luxurious air, and look up to the
deep green cypresses of Fiesole, or bare his brow to the moun-
tain wind, and find refreshment ; — that when doubt and per-
plexity baffled his zeal, he might turn his gaze towards the
palace roofs and church domes of Florence, and recall the tro-
phies of art wrought out by travail, misgivings, and care, that
are garnered beneath them; that when his hope of success
should grow faint, he might suspend the chisel's movement,
raise his eye to the western horizon, and remember the land
for which he toiled."*

Greenough then occupied the wing of a somewhat dreary
palazzo near the Porto Pinti ; the window of his studio, how-
ever, commanded views of an extensive garden ; and one of the
rooms was fitted up in the American style. Here, beside a
wood fire, on winter evenings, it was his delight to greet two
or three friends around the tea-table, speculate on the news

* Italian Sketch Book.

Memoir. 25

from home, criticise works of art, and tell stories. I recall,
with melancholy pleasure, «m any of these occasions. He would
often occupy himself with pen or crayon while thus enjoying a
social hour ; sometimes covering a sheet of paper with the
remembered faces of the absent and the loved ; and, at others,
making* elaborate and carefully wrought designs for a basso-
relievo or statue. He had srffodies enough for twenty years'
use, partially sketched at the time of his death. A fine speci-
men of his facility and precision as a draughtsman is before
me as I write — his parting gift when I left Florence. It
represents Orestes tormented by the Furies ; the clear, fine out-
line and statuesque effect, as well as the relief of the figures,
are given with the finish of an excelleut engraving. Not less
pleasant in the retrospect, are the walks we used to take, some
years later, during a remarkably fine autumn. He beguiled
the way with humorous anecdotes, descriptions of men and
places, and remarks on art and letters. There was a vivacious,
liberal, and often brilliant tone in those by-way conversations
that indicated a mental affluence in the highest degree win-
some and satisfactory. We were usually accompanied by a
remarkably fine English greyhound, a great pet of Green-
ough's, called Arno, whose intelligent gambols always amused
him ; this favorite dog lived to a green old age, and his marble
effigy, in an attitude peculiar to him, from the chisel of his
master, now ornaments the librarv of the Hon. Edward
Everett.

Comparatively isolated however in the pursuit of his art, at

26 Memoir.

a distance from home, and destitute of that encouragement
which the natives of Europe bestow upon their artistic country-
men, Greenough's first years in Florence were passed with
little but dreams of hope, and the consciousness of improve-
ment to sustain him. There were periods, at this time, when
the young sculptor was depressed and nervous ; — as month
after month flitted by and brought him no commissions. The
Americans who visited Italy, delighted in his society and
respected his self-devotion ; but few had the means, and very
few the taste and liberality to give him substantial aid. He
occupied himself upon busts, designs, and studies ; and realized
that in art, as in life, " they also serve who only stand in wait."
It was about this period, however, that his heart was cheered
by the reception of anonymous pecuniary aid. He never dis-
covered the source of this kindly benefaction ; but circum-
stances justified him in the conviction, that it was sent from
his native city. To evidence his gratitude he had recourse to
an artistic device worthy of his genius. He sent to a friend in
Boston a basso-relievo in marble, representing a student intent
upon his book; a lamp burns before him, and a hand mysteri-
ously thrust from the cloud above, is feeding it with oil. The
design is well executed ; and the unknown benefactor must
have thrilled with pleasure at so graceful an acknowledgment.
He always referred with grateful emotion, also, to the gleam
of sunshine which encouraged him, at this crisis, in the friendship
of our late renowned novelist — Cooper. The American sym-
pathies of this distinguished man, as well as his personal affec-

Memoir. 27

tion, were excited by Greenough. One day they paused in one
of the saloons of the Pitti palace, before a capo d 1 opera of
Raphael, and the artist pointed out to his companion the fine
drawing exhibited in two little angelic figures in the foreground,
in the act of holding an open book, and singing. Cooper inquir-
ed if a subject like this was not well adapted to sculpture ;
afterwards one of his daughters copied the figures ; and the
result of their mutual interest in the design, was an order from
Cooper for a group, which in a few months Greenough execut-
ed in marble. It was afterwards exhibited in America, under
the name of the " Chanting Cherubs ;" and not only proved a
most acceptable immediate encouragement, but served to in-
troduce the artist to his countrvmen. In allusion to this sub-
ject, the artist observes in a letter written some years after ;
" Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair after my return to
Italy. He employed me as I wished to be employed ; and
up to this moment has been as a father to me."

This was the first group in marble executed by an American.
The scope of the work is obviously limited. It consists merely
of two nude cherubs. Yet a careful scrutiny will reveal those
niceties of execution which proclaim the true artist. One of
the figures is planted on its little feet, and its position is up-
right ; his bosom heaves with a gentle exultation as if inspired
by the song ; his companion, quite as beautiful, is slightly awed ;
one has ringlets that suggest more strength than the smooth
flowing hair of his brother, whose face is also longer and more
spiritual and subdued ; he is more up-looking, less self-sustain-

28 M e M i a •

ed. A most true and delicate principle of contrast is thus un-
folded in the two forms and faces. The celestial and the child-
like are blended ; we realize, as we gaze, the holiness of infant
beauty ; a peaceful, blessed charm seems wafted from .the
infantile forms, whose contour and expression are alive with
innocent, sacred, and, as it were, magnetic joy. Here we
have the poetry of childhood, as in the Medora the poetry of
Death.

The grace, truth to nature, and infantile beauty of the Che-
rubs were at once and warmly recognised. It was an inciden-
tal result of this labor of love that Greenouo-h obtained the
government order to execute his statue of Washington. The
pledge he had thus given of ability, and the earnest represen-
tations of Allston, Cooper, and Everett, were the means of this
important enterprise. To the sculptor's honor these timely
services were never foro-otten. His last work was a bust of his
illustrious friend, the American novelist, which he proposed to
cast in bronze,, at his own expense, and" place in the field
where stands the old mill in Newport — one of the scenes of
his novel of tire " Red Rover." He also took frequent counsel
with the friends of the departed author in regard to erecting a
suitable monument to his name, and among his papers is an
elaborate design for the work. The example of recognition
thus commenced was soon followed, and numerous orders
reached the now prosperous exile. Among the beautiful ideal
works he executed within the few succeeding years was
Medora — illustrative of Byron's memorable description of the

Memoir. 29

Corsair's bride after death ; of which the greatest praise is to
say that the marble embodies the verse :

In life itself she was so still and fair,

That death with gentler aspect withered there ;

And the cold flowers her colder hand contained,

In that last grasp as tenderly were strained

As if she scarcely felt but feigned a sleep,

And made it almost mockery yet to weep ;

The long dark lashes fringed her lids of snow,

And veiled — thought shrinks from all that lurked below ;

Oh ! on the eye death most exerts his might,

And hurls the spirit from her throne of light !

Sinks those blue orbs in that long lost eclipse,

But spares, as yet, the charm around the lips —

Yet, yet they seemed as they forbore to smile,

And wished repose — but only for a while ;

But the white shroud and each extended tress,

Long, fair — but spread in utter lifelessness,

Which, late the sport of every summer wind,

Escaped the baffled wreath that strove to bind :

These — and the pale pure cheek, became the bier —

But she is nothing — wherefore is he here?*

There is a mingled pathos and delicacy in the shape and
attitude of this figure which touches the heart and awes the
imagination. The lines of the face have that inflexible repose
which indicates the sleep of death ; the neck and bosom are

* The Corsair. Canto iii.

30 Memoir.

eloquent of feminine grace; the peculiar grasp of the hand
which still retains the flowers, and the manner in which the
drapery folds over the limbs, are in exquisite harmon) T with the
subject. A chaste beauty, entire proportion, and affecting inte-
rest characterize the Medora. The " Angel and Child" is another
favorite work. Its conception is singularly beautiful, and it is
realized to the life. The artist's idea was to represent a child
received and guided by its angel companion into the mysterious
glories of heaven. The difference between the human and the
spiritual is exhibited in the baby outline of the child, rounded,
natural, and real — and the mature celestial grace of the angel —
his look of holy courage and his attitude of cheer, while the reve-
rence and timidity of his newly-arrived brother are equally obvi-
ous. In these subjects the high imagination and native senti-
ment of the sculptor are evident. His taste for English poetry
caused him to select with discrimination and indicate with faci-
lity the most apt illustrations both with pen and chisel. With
the latter he imaged the most vague yet effective of Pope's
female portraits — Heloise :

•'Dear, fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed;
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise
"Where, joined with God's, his loved idea lies."

In the portraits of children, whether from actual life or his
own fancy, Greenough excelled. Two boys playing with a
squirrel, and two others engaged in a game of battledore, we

Memoir. 31

recall as remarkable specimens both of spirited portraiture and
felicitous action. His earliest ideal work was a statue of
Abel, modelled during his first visit to Rome — and his last,
" the Rescue." It was executed at Florence for the govern-
ment, designed in 1837, and completed in 1851. It represents
the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon and aboriginal races.
The chief figure is an American settler, an athletic man, in a
hunting shirt and cap, rescuing a female and her infant from a
savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them ; the
effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has ap-
proached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped
both his arms, holding them back, and in such a manner that he
has no command of his muscles, even for the purpose of freeing
himself. It is nearly two years since this admirable work was
completed. The government ordered that one of the vessels of
our squadron in the Mediterranean, when on its return to the
United States, should take it on board. Greenough came to
this country with the view of superintending its erection.
After long delay, a vessel was sent to Leghorn, but on account
of the hatchway being too small to admit the group, it was left
behind ; but is now understood to be on its way in a merchant
vessel.

In the meantime his statue of Washington had been
finished. Of the merits of this work the criticisms of two of
its most intelligent admirers, reprinted in this volume, afford
the best evidence. It was undertaken with a painful sense of
responsibility, designed with great study, and after long delibe-

32 Memoir.

ration ; it occupied the best part of eight years, and was erected
under circumstances unfavorable to its immediate appreciation.
The just complaints of the artist, in one of the selected papers,
as to its present condition, should meet with respectful notice
from those in authority.

" Among the most charming creations of Mr. Greenough's
chisel," says Edward Everett, in a letter from Italy in 1841,
" is the statue of a child of three years old, the daughter of
Count Revicksky, the Austrian Minister at Florence. The little
girl is represented as seated on a bank of flowers contemplating
a butterfly, which has just lighted on her raised forearm. The
intentness with which she regards the symbol o£ the immortal
soul, happily indicates the awakening of an infant understand-
ing. So entirely absorbed is she in contemplation of the object
which has attracted her attention, and so complete is her
repose, that a lizard creeps fearlessly from his hole in the bank
of flowers. The gaze of the child is full of that mixture of
simplicity and thought, with which children sometimes give us
such startling assurance of the unfathomed mystery of our
being." In the same letter he adds, " I regard Mr. Greenough's
Washington as one of the greatest works of sculpture of
modern times. I do not know the work which can justly
be preferred to it, whether we consider the purity of the taste,
the loftiness of the conception, the truth of the character, or,
what we must own we feel less able to judge of, accuracy of
anatomical study and mechanical skill." The rationale of this
work is admirably set forth in the artist's letter to the govern-

Memoir. 33

merit explaining the principles of the design. Another work
that amply fulfils all the requirements of a severe taste, and is
yet crowned with an ideal beauty, is a head of Our Saviour. It
is just enough larger than life to derive from the contour and
features a sublimity of effect. The expression is profoundly
calm, but the serenity is that of conscious power tempered with
a touching benignity. Its characteristic point is an infinitely
suggestive charm, at once holy, pure, and majestic. The bust
is fixed upon a coiled serpent whose head is bowed in front ;
and the whole conception is eloquent with the highest moral
significance. It invites contemplation, and is instinct with de-
vout sentiment. The beautiful simplicity of the idea is only
equalled by the chaste and noble execution. Greenough enter-
tained, indeed, the highest view of the function of religious art,
but, at the same time, recognised its true use. Jn a letter
referring to this work he says, " I am not aware that any Ame-
rican has, until now, risked the placing before his countrymen
a representation of Our Saviour. The strong prejudice, or
rather conviction of the Protestant mind has, perhaps, deterred
many. Not behind the most jealous in deprecating the abuse
of images in places of public worship, I think, nevertheless,
that the person and face of Our Saviour is a legitimate subject
of art, because, although our conception must fall short of
what the heart of the Christian looks for, yet you will allow
that we may offer to many an imperfect instead of a mean or
grovelling idea which they have drawn from other sources.
The prayers and hymns of the most pious are as far unworthy

3

34 Memoir.

the perfection to which they are addressed, as the lights and
shadows of the artist ; yet both may be accepted as fervent
asj^irations after the good and beautiful. It is a mistake to
suppose that the artist, because he stops working, thinks his
task perfect ; he says only — behold the subject proposed to me
as the art which is in me can give it."

•My next meeting with Greenough was in the autumn of
1837. On a bright cool day in October, the Cascine of Flo-
rence was thronged. Lines of open carriages extended along
the park ; under the chestnuts groups of pedestrians sauntered ;
the dead leaves flew along the turf; the Arno gleamed in the
sun. The scene was at once rural and festive. In every
barouche were gaily-dressed ladies, and the cheerful hum of
conversation was suddenly quieted as all hastened to the
inclosed o£en space between the trees, to witness a race. This
was a rare entertainment originated by the English residents of
Florence. The bright tints of the jockeys' costumes, the sleek,
elegant, and spirited horses, and the hilarity of the company,
accorded with the bracing air and cheerful sunshine. In the
midst of the crowd I met Greenough. It was a few days after
his marriage with Miss Louisa Gore of Boston. In a subse-
quent conversation we referred to the prosperous termination
of those days of suspense and anxiety which, on my first visit,
had shadowed his career. In the brief interval he had received
many commissions, achieved a reputation, and was now settled
happily in a congenial home. The auspicious change in my
friend's prospects identified itself with the gay scene in which

Memoir. 35

our intercourse was resumed ; and it struck my fancy as sym-
bolic of the happiness that crowned his life.

Florence continued to be his residence until his final return
to this country. In the meantime he frequently visited Ger-
many, Paris, and other parts of Europe, and came home to
superintend the erection of his statue of Washington. His
house at Florence soon became the favorite resort of Ameri-
cans; and all who enjoyed the hospitality of the Palazzo
Baciocchi, now recall the delightful hours spent there with grate-
ful yet melancholy interest. The habitues, indeed, must feel
with one of his neighbors who, in a recent letter, alluding to
Greenough's death, says, "He was a true, high-spirited, and
independent man, and I feel, in losing him, that something is
permanently deducted from my life."

Here were passed the happiest years of his life ; and any one
who shared, even for a time, his existence in the Tuscan capi-
tal, soon realized how just was his partiality for that adopted
home. If less rich in the trophies of art than Rome, there is
more unity of effect in the architecture, galleries, and scenery.
In his daily walks for many years, Greenough here became
familiar with the noble relics of the middle ages, sombre but
massive ; the grand simplicity of the Strozzi and Pitti palaces,
the beautiful cornice of the Ricardi, Bruneleschi's gigantic
dome and airy tower, the graceful bridges that span the Arno,
and the lovely gates of San Lorenzo ; objects ever fresh and
charming to an artist's eye. The memorials of individual
genius, too, always suggestive to his cultivated mind, of epochs

36 Memoir.

in the history of art, of long and patient study, and of the lof-
tiest aspirations, were constant themes to him of encouraging
meditation and eloquent discourse. In Florence are gathered the
most characteristic legacies of Angelo and Cellini, and the city
and its environs are intimately associated with Dante, Galileo,
Boccacio, Vespucci, Macchiavelli, and Milton. A promenade
along the river in view of the unrivalled sunsets that bathe the
distant Apennine range with gold and purple, an hour's gossip at
the cafe, visits to the galleries and studios, and an occasional
evening at the opera, are constant and available recreations.
A few years since a new square was laid out in Florence, on
the Fiesole side of the Arno, between the Porta San Gallo and
the Porta al Prato. It is called the Piazza Maria Antonia, in
honor of the present Grand Duchess. The corner lot was pur-
chased by Greenough, and upon it he erected a studio which is
a model of its kind, and unsurpassed in Europe. All the rooms
are on one floor, built with great strength and a fine ornamental
stone work on the exterior, having in the centre the cypher G.
Attached to the structure is a beautiful garden; within is a
spacious and admirably lighted exhibition-room — near by the
sculptor's private studio, a large apartment for the workmen, a
gallery of plaster casts, a vestibule hung with pictures, a noble
rotunda, leading by a short flight of steps to the garden, and a
charming library. This studio is a monument of Greenough's
intelligent taste and aesthetic culture ; and it is deeply to be
regretted that it cannot be preserved as an artistic temple to
his memory.

Memoir. 37

In the Autumn of 1851 Greenough returned to the United
States with his family. He came ostensibly to erect his group
of " The Rescue," now completed and packed for exportation ;
but his departure from Florence was hastened by the political
state of Europe ; the myrmidons of Austria thronged the streets
of that beautiful capital ; the press was under strict censorship,
and a system of espionage interfered with all freedom of speech, .
domestic privacy, and social activity — a contrast, at once sad
and humiliating to the hopeful era which had so recently
closed. Upon returning to his residence one day, Greenough
found several cavalry soldiers quartered on his premises. He
instantly wrote to the American Consul at Leghorn, and
obtained a diplomatic office of sufficient consideration to relieve
him of this annoyance; but so many instances of despotic
injustice daily came under his notice, that they, in a measure,
destroyed the charms of a hitherto genial home, and he longed
once more to breathe the free air, and hold communion with
the free minds of his native country. He believed also that he
could now be more useful at home, and that circumstances
there were more favorable to the artist.

There are certain peculiarities noticeable on returning to
this country after a long absence, by all observant minds, which
Greenough not only opposed in conversation but practically
repudiated. He wondered at the extreme deference to public
opinion, at the absurd extravagance in living, and the prevalent
want of moral courage. The true artist's simplicity in the
externals of life was visible in him always ; his individuality

38 Memoir.

was not set aside in conformity to fashion ; he manifested reve-
rence for age ; he was impatient of the substitutes for comfort,
fellowship, and truth invented by what is called society ; he
contemned that habitual view of general questions and human
welfare through the contracting lens of self-interest which per-
vades a mercantile community; and it was the essential in
character, experience, and social economy, and not the tempo-
rary and artificial, which he recognised.

I was agreeably surprised to perceive the confidence with
which he unfolded his plans, and the generous zeal that led
him, at once and earnestly, to advocate so many projects of
taste and utility. It was remarkable to what an extent his
personal influence acted even upon our most utilitarian and
busy citizens. He took me aside one morning in Broadway,
and whispered the result of his visit among the leading com-
mercial men of New York, in behalf of a statue of Washington
designed to ornament Union Square. The sum of twenty -five
thousand dollars was subscribed in sums of five hundred. It
may be safely asserted that no other man but Greenough could,
in so brief a space, have won the sympathy and " material aid"
of so many stern votaries of commerce.

I was interested also in the change produced in him by
domestic ties. As he had once talked of art he now talked of
life. His affections had led him to reflect upon human des-
tiny ; and I found him as eloquent and as ingenious in the
discussion of the religious sentiment and educational theories
as he was wont to be when intent upon the vocation of the

Memoi'k. 39

artist. However imaginative in some of these speculations, lie
was remarkably in earnest and reverent of nature as the true
mother, whose laws were to be devoutly studied and implicitly
obeyed ; in her statutes as well as handiwork he beheld the
finger of God ; and justly ascribed no small degree of existent
evil to the system of intervention by which this divine light
is obscured or perverted.

His intimate acquaintance with the state of parties, and the
course of governments abroad, as well as his decided liberal
sentiments, constantly impelled him, at this time, to political
discussion ; and whoever engaged with him in these colloquies,
whether convinced by his arguments or not, was informed by
the array of facts he cited, and charmed by his graphic powers
of description and brilliant analysis. He was inspired also by
that spirit of enterprise which marks even the speculative
opinions and social life of our country. Looking around him
with the eye of an artist and the heart of a patriot, he was
conscious of a new scope and motive, both for his genius and
sympathies. He had matured a system of architecture founded
on the idea of the appropriate, and adapted to the climate and
exigencies of the country. He was prepared to suggest and
illustate the adornment of our cities with national statuary. In
many of the details of social economy he was the advocate of
wise and practical reforms ; and had much to say that was
fresh and noble, if not available, upon education, hygiene,
society, art, literature, and manners. There was a remarkable
communicative instinct in Greenough ; and the results of his

40 Memoir.

studies and experience were the property of his friends. A dis-
interested mental activity was the distinctive and invaluable trait
of his character. There is no doubt that if his life had been
preserved, he would have proved a most attractive and useful
teacher through the rostrum and the press, in departments of
thought and action comparatively neglected among us. The
principles of art he could unfold with the highest intelligence ;
and, without an harmonious and complete system, he had
attained to many just conceptions of the philosophy of life.

Greenough's temperament was both sanguine and nervous —
a combination more favorable to a receptive and sympathetic,
than a self-possessed and tranquil character. Accordingly he
was of an excitable nature, and required for the healthful ex-
ercise of his mind and wise enjoyment of life, at once a genial,
free, and harmonious sphere. Artist-life in Italy, so calm,
absorbing, and undisturbed, was fitted to his nature. The
amenities of a domestic circle, the pleasant stimulus of in-
tellectual companionship, the wholesome occupation of body
and mind, were to him a peculiar necessity. The restless,
bustling, ever changeful existence that infects the very atmo-
sphere of this country were sometimes oppressive and irritating.
He felt the absence of that equability and routine, that keeps
brain and heart so well balanced in the old cities of Europe.
He missed the gradations by which the temperature seems to
adapt itself to the sensitive frame. In the climate, the society,
the mode of life, he found it almost impossible to escape the
hurried, alternating, fitful spirit of the land. It seemed as if

Memoir. 41

the genius of enterprise around had infected his mind with a
tendency to action at once impulsive and uncertain. He con-
stantly broached new plans ; and sought to attach others to
his own aims. The transition from a serene to an excitable
social atmosphere, from a conservative to a progressive country,
was too abrupt for a nature both sensitive and aspiring. He
caught the spirit of the times, and was eager to throw his
energies into the stream of popular activity. There was soon
obvious not so much an inconsistency of thought as a want of
correspondence between his avowed sentiments and pur-
poses and his actions. It was evident that his mind had be-
come undulv excited, as is so often the case with the novice
in American life. But in this instance the physical re-
sult was unusual and inexpressibly sad. A brain fever ter-
minated, after a few days' illness, the life of Greenough. It may
be regarded as a fortunate circumstance, that the attack occur-
red at his house in Newport, and while he was surrounded by
those most near and dear to him. He was subsequently re-
moved to the vicinity of Boston for the benefit of medical
treatment. While the life-struggle was going on, we can ima-
gine the agony of suspense that brooded over his household
at Newport, where severe illness kept his dearest companion.
The fatal issue was anticipated by the Italian servants — two
Tuscan women who had accompanied the family on their
return. With that passionate grief characteristic of the race,
they burst forth one wintry afternoon with the declaration,

that the Padrone would surely die, because a large owl had

3*

42 Memoir.

descended the chimney and was found in the parlor; the
incident awakened their latent superstition, and the bird of
ill-omen was deemed the certain precursor of death. A few
hours afterwards came the sad tidings, but they were mitigat-
ed, as far as such desolation can be, by the fact that his suffer-
ings were inconsiderable, and the delusions incident to his
malady, of a gay rather than a despairing nature. His
strength gradually yielded to the cerebral excitement, and he
expired on Saturday morning, the 18th of December, 1852.

He had been naturally impatient, on his return to America, to
settle himself in an agreeable locality with his studio arranged
to his taste, a fine subject in the process of execution, and his
family and household gods around him. But owing to the
unjustifiable delay of the government in sending for his group
at Leghorn, to the uncertainty which obtained in regard to
the two or three important works he proposed to execute, and
his unavoidable indecision as to a permanent residence, — the
year which intervened between his arrival in the United States,
and his death, was passed in various places and occupations,
and attended with much care and discomfort. He enjoyed,
however, by this very state of things, many opportunities of
social intercourse ; and the intervals spent with his family at
Newport, during the last summer, were periods of unalloyed
enjoyment.

It was at this time and, as it were, with a prophetic sentiment
that he wrote : — " I am arrived at that ' mezzo del camming
that half-way house, where a man sees, or thinks he sees, both

Memoir. 43

ways. If my head is not ripe it is whitening — I begin to love
to sit alone — to look upon the skies, the water and the soft
green — the face of the mighty mother ! I feel that she thus
sweetly smiles on me, more sweetly than formerly, because she
means to call me home to her own bosom. I would not pass
away and not leave a sign that I, for one, born by the grace
of God in this land, found life a cheerful thing, and not that
sad and dreadful task with whose prospect they scared my
vouth."

It was here, on the beautiful sea-shore, that I once more
renewed an association commenced so many years ago in Italy ;
and never, since the hour of our first acquaintance, did Green-
ough appear more full of noble aims, more kindled by the
inspiration of nature and society, and more abounding in intel-
lectual sympathy. It is difficult to realize that the agile and
well-developed form that sported with such grace amid the bil-
lows, is now lifeless ; that the nervous frame so delicately
strung no more responds to vital influences ; and that the voice
attuned to a key so sympathetic, and freighted with such
wealth of mind, is hushed for ever ! By a singular coincidence
the last time I saw Greenough, he took me home to pass a
rainy evening, and as he sat at work upon a crayon head, we
revived together the memories of those happy days in Italy.
It was early in autumn. The gay visitors at Newport had
nearly all returned to the cities, and the ties of friendship were
drawn closer from the more frequent and uninterrupted oppor-
tunities of association. Imperceptibly the hours flitted away ;

44 Memoir.

and I was surprised to find it near midnight when I rose to
depart. I remember, during my homeward walk, to have
mused of Greenough's versatility and prolific ideas during that
interview, — which I so little imagined would be the last. He
had, in those few hours, run through every phase of conversa-
tion. With the skill of a consummate improvvisatorc he had
told a story in the dramatic and artistic way peculiar to him,
painting the scene to the eye, giving the very sensation of the
experience ; he had analysed, with tact and discrimination,
several characters of our mutual acquaintance; he had ably
discussed a question of public concern, and he had evolved
several bon-mots. In a word, his talk was argumentative, pic-
turesque, anecdotical, earnest, philosophic, and humorous ; and
this without the least effort or formality, but through the natu-
ral suggestions of the moment. He made me realize anew his
varied knowledge and his independent mind. I felt that he
was capable of the greatest social and artistic usefulness. I
recalled the consistency of his friendship, his kind leave-taking,
and cheerful anticipation of " another such evening soon ;" and
these vivid recollections deepened the sorrow with which, a few
weeks later and in a foreign land, I was startled with the news
of his death.

The outline I have given of Greenough's career as an artist,
affords but an inadequate idea of his genius and character. It
is the distinction of the latter, where they possess originality
and power, always to suggest more than they actualize. As a
sculptor his executive ability fell short of his conceptions ; and

Memoir. 45

as a man his influence was quite as individual and extensive as
his artistic fame. Indeed he was endeared to his friends and
useful to the world by virtue of larger gifts than belong exclu-
sively to the practical artist. In respect to personal efficiency
— that charm and gift that diffuses itself by the magnetism of
association and the attrition of mind, Greenough held a memo-
rable place in the estimation not only of a vast number but of
widely different minds. He combined public spirit with the
qualities that insure good fellowship, and the facility of the
man of the world with the attainments of a liberal scholar, to
a degree and in a manner altogether rare even in this age of
generalization. His original endowments and his wide expe-
rience equally contributed to this result. He went forth in
early manhood from a cultivated but formal society, where he
had received an excellent domestic and intellectual training,
urged by a natural love of art in a special form ; but, by virtue
of his broad intelligence and generous sympathies, while mainly
devoted to his profession, he became an intellectual cosmo-
polite.

The classical education he had received, and his early advan-
tages, made him familiar with the historical relations of his art.
He could fully realize its indirect value and its characteristic
development. As a national language he understood its sig-
nificance — grand and inscrutable in Egypt, unrivalled in Gre-
cian beauty, primitive in Central America. The fables of
mythology, the monumental glory, the poetry and the truth
which sculpture embodied in different eras and countries, he

46 Memoir.

knew as a scholar and appreciated as an artist. Contrary to
the usual effect of extensive knowledge, this acquaintance with
the facts and meaning of sculpture did not make him a devotee
of any school ; he thoroughly enjoyed the masterpieces of the
chisel, and expatiated, with earnest intelligence, upon each sepa-
rate trophy of the sculptor, however different in kind. I have
heard him alike eloquent over the radiant Apollo of the Vati-
can and the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici chapel, the Lions
of Canova and the Perseus of Cellini, a Bacchante by Barto-
lini, a group of Gibson's, one of Flaxman's linear wonders, an
apostle of Thorvvaldsen, and a bust of Powers. It was in the
variety of his comparisons and the richness of his illustrations
that he evinced the extent of his culture. The majority of our
artists have been self-taught men, chiefly dependent upon a
special talent. Greenough's general knowledge proved a valu-
able and attractive facility in his expositions of art. The
remarkable absence of extravagance in all his artistic produc-
tions was another result of his disciplined taste. The simpli-
city that belongs to true superiority had become with him a
principle both of judgment and action. During his early stu-
dies in Italy, Homer was frequently in his hands. In literature,
art, and life, his taste was singularly just; not a trace of affec-
tation or fantasy is visible in any of his designs or statues.
The classical standard he thoroughly appreciated, while, at the
same time, the details of expression in nature were his constant
study.

He was also a student of art in general as well as a proficient

Memoir.- 47

in sculpture. He had enjoyed a very wide range of observa-
tion and a large acquaintance with artists. There was no sub-
ject upon which he had thought more earnestly or could dis-
course with more zest and eloquence than the philosophy of
art. The principles of architecture, modes of living, arrange-
ments of society — in a word, the wise organization of the means
provided by nature for the ends desirable for man, was to him
a theme of the deepest significance. With a truly fraternal
sympathy for his race, instead of regarding his pursuit as exclu-
sive and chiefly intended to gratify individual taste, he advo-
cated art as an element of humanity, a universal benefit, and a
source both of high social utility and poetic faith. Accord-
ingly, with his pen and his speech, he urged the claims of art
upon his countrymen, not as a professor but as a brother,
striving always to make apparent the essential interest and the
national dignity of the subject, and this course he pursued with
the intelligent mechanic not less than the fashionable circle.

Few authors by profession are better equipped for literary
art than was Greenough ; had not sculpture been his chosen
pursuit, he would have doubtless adventured in the field of let-
ters. By education, verbal memory, and remarkable power of
expression, he was admirably fitted to excel as a writer. In
Europe, he had acquired entire facility in the use of the
modern languages. He had a natural love and discriminating
taste for poetry ; and, as has been truly said by one of his
friends, was an artist in the telling of a story. Occasionally he
contributed to the journals of the day, usually in order to dis-

48 Memoir.

sent from some popular but unphilosophical criticism on art, or
to invoke public attention in favor of a neglected work of
genius ; it was thus usually an impulse of generosity or a dic-
tate of justice that led him to take up the pen. His friends,
however, were desirous to see it wielded with a more elaborate
and definite purpose by a hand so skilful ; and during the last
year of his life he was frequently occupied in writing. His
thoughts were not cast in a formal shape, but jotted down as
occasion and mood suggested. Many of these desultory efforts
he submitted to his literary acquaintances, and they united in
admiration of their freshness, beauty, and acumen. They were
subsequently in part arranged in a book form, but in conse-
quence of the various suggestions he received and the modifica-
tions he intended, the plan was never wholly completed. It is
chiefly from these fragments of a work that I have gleaned the
specimens contained in this volume. They are mainly essays
which indicate an unfinished achievement ; but they are none
the less precious and interesting as a record of his opinions and
sentiments, and illustrations of his style.

The strictures upon art as it actually exists in, and is essen-
tially related to our republie, are bold, honest, and wise ; they
have a practical value, and are often expressed with earnestness
and grace. A busy yet cheerful spirit of utility, a genuine
patriotism and love of beauty characterize them ; and the
lectures and correspondence should be now gathered up not
only as appropriate memorials but as the endeared legacy of
their author. " His oonversation," observes an experienced and

Memoir, 49

gifted author, in a recent letter, " was both brilliant and deep ;
and his writing so remarkable for its realism and its occasional
splendor, that I conceived the highest hope of what he should
do, and cause others to do, by his speech and pen as well as by
his chisel."

Greenough was a consistent republican. His alternate resi-
dence in Europe and America, only confirmed his sympathy
with the people and his faith in their claims. His steadfast,
ardent loyalty to the principles of his own country, is the
more remarkable in a man whose tastes were refined, and whose
associations fully exposed him to the blandishments of rank
and fortune. A spectator of, and to some extent, a participa
tor in the remarkable events of 1848, his trust and hope were
never subdued by the subsequent re-action. His " faith was
large in time." A witness of the siege of Vienna, and an
actor in the popular demonstration that celebrated the advent
of liberty in Florence, he was entirely cognizant both of the
condition of the masses, and the power of the conservative
party ; but he also had the discrimination and the love of his
race which induces a calm and earnest trust in the ultimate
triumph of freedom. To hear an American defend the encroach-
ments of European rulers upon popular rights, or discredit the
national impulse, — excited in Greenough warm indignation.
He used to startle, and perhaps offend the complacent mem-
bers of what he called the " Tory party" in his own country,
by the vigor of his animadversion or the sting of his wit.
And yet no advocate of republican sentiment was ever more

50 Memoir.

free from prejudice. It was on the wide ground of humanity
that he took his position ; and an aristocratic table was often
the scene of his most eloquent protest.

Another rare and precious trait was his nobility of mind.
The most attractive phase of genius is its coincidence with
magnanimity. So genuine was his love of art that it made
him self-oblivious. When a brother artist, his superior in ex-
ecutive ability for the most profitable department of sculpture,
became his neighbor, he not only gave him a fraternal wel-
come, but cheerfully yielded his best workmen, and choicest
marble, as well as his advice and encouragement, to facilitate
and cheer the stranger. When he planned a monumental
trophy, it was almost invariably based on the idea of a division
of labor that included the services of others. To discover and
proclaim merit was his delight ; the glowing terms in which
he advocated the claims of unappreciated or modest talent,
seldom failed to kindle sympathy ; from the rank of our
native artists no one could have been less spared in this re-
gard. His recognition was not limited to achievement, but
extended to latent powers. He was one of that invaluable
minority whose perception goes beneath the surface of charac-
ter and the accidents of expression ; and perhaps of all his
friends he valued chiefly " the poet who never wrote."

The partiality of artists and men of letters for Greenough's
society was a natural result of his fine social qualities. He
came at once into relation with those who aspired to high cul-
ture or lived for intellectual ends. The frank hospitality with

Memoir. 51

which he received another's thought, and expressed his own,
rendered companionship with him easy and genial. It was not
requisite to accept his theory or coincide in his opinions in
order either to enjoy or profit by his society. Like Montaigne
he seemed rather to prefer a brisk encounter to an assimilation
of minds ; and among those most warmly attached to him
there was the greatest diversity of character and sentiment. It
was enough for him that an individual possessed courteous,
brave, intelligent, or generous qualities, to awaken respect or
sympathy. "With the independent thinker, the lover of beauty,
the student of art, he was always at home, and oblivious of
those considerations of nationality, creed, or party that limit
and chill the associations of less Catholic minds. He entered
with the same relish into the by-way vagaries of Cole, Morse,
or any of his brother artists as they roamed over the Roman
campagna or the valley of the Arno, as he discussed a literary
question with the classic Landor in his Villa garden, sympa-
thized with Nicollini in his deep patriotic regrets, contributed
to the table-talk of the Marquis Capponi, listened to memorable
reminiscences as he moulded the benign features of Lafayette,
discussed American character with Dr. Francis, or social reform
with Emerson.

Among his friends were a Hungarian nobleman, a Francis-
can friar, an American Presbyterian divine, and an Italian poet.
His genius was eminently social. As we retrace the path of
his life, it appears crowded with endeared and venerated forms ;
and we feel that the highest privilege won by his talents and

52 Memoir.

character, was that of free intercourse with superior minds.
These select intelligences quickened without interfering with his
nature. He was keenly appreciative, and quick to detect the pro-
mise as well as the fruition of excellence. I remember accom-
panying him on a visit to a sculptor who had just completed
an equestrian statue, and desired his frank opinion. The faults
of the work were so apparent and predominant that as he cri-
tically surveyed it, I began to wonder what single encouraging
trait he could, without violence to truth, recognise. His first
words were — " ce molto vita" and the vitality and spirit of the
conception alone redeemed it. The zeal with which he wel-
comed and befriended Powers on his first arrival in Italy was
delightful to contemplate; and few of his countrymen who
have gone abroad to follow art as a vocation, have failed to
experience his cheerful sympathy. Perhaps this readiness to
acknowledge and foster talent, the spontaneous interest which
a marked character or a gift of intellect excited in Greenough,
was the secret of his power to elicit and refresh the thought of
his companion.

By this contact with leading minds in various countries, by
habitual observation of nature and art, and especially through
the exercise of genuine mental independence, he disciplined and
enriched his intellect in every sphere. True to his American
principles, he recognised no aristocracy but that of nature;
broad in his views of life, he rose superior to all jealousy or
narrowness; bold and free in opinion, he uttered his honest
sentiments with candor and enthusiasm ; and thus, in the cha-

Memoir. 53

racter of an artist, he brought an ever fresh accession of infor-
mation, wit, and geniality to the social circle, and shed abroad
the light and glow of a noble, kindly, and intelligent man. It
is in this view that we feel the void occasioned by his death,
and realize the loss his country has sustained ; for art, though
a grand and beautiful, is not a universal language, and when
her gifted votaries are also priests at the altar of humanity,
they are doubly mourned and honored.

CATALOGUE OF GREENOUGffS WORKS.

1. A statue of Abel, modelled in Rome, in 1826, but never
executed in marble.

2. Statue of Byron's Medora. For R. Gilmore, of Balti-
more.

3. Group. The Chanting Cherubs. For J. Fenimore
Cooper.

4. The Ascension of the Infant Spirit. A group of an Infant
and Cherub.

5. Group. Portraits of two Children of David Sears, play-
ing with a squirrel.

6. Statuette. The Genius of America. For J. Hoyt, of
New York.

7. Portrait statue of Miss Grinnell.

8. Portrait Statues of two Youths, sons of J. Thompson, of
New York.

9. Monument to Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs. For Miss Gibbs of
Newport.

10. Statue of Washington, by order of Congress, for the
Capitol.

Catalogue of Works. 55

The sum, twenty thousand dollars, voted by Congress, was
intended to be an honest compensation for this work. The
amount was the same as that paid by Massachusetts to Chantry
for his statue of Washington, the size of life. Greenough,
determined to spare neither time nor expense to make his
work worthy of the country and himself, made it colossal
(twice the size of life), involving an expense threefold beyond
what it would have cost of the natural size.

The embellishments of the chair have a significance which
often escape observation. The statuettes of Columbus, and an
Indian Chief, supporting the arms of the chair, and the trident,
have found favor as being obviously illustrative of our country's
history. But the bas-reliefs of the Rising Sun on Apollo's cha-
riot on the one side, and the infant Hercules strangling a ser-
pent on the other, are, by many, looked upon as mere " clas-
sical" embellishments, independent of the subject. Were they
no more than this, they would be disfigurements instead of
adornments. The artist originally designed to have inscribed
two lines from an ode of Virgil ; — under the Apollo, Nunc
nascitur lucidus or do ; and under the Hercules, Incipe, parve
puer, cui non risere parentes. These verses would have inter-
preted the bas-reliefs. Greenough finally omitted them, be-
cause sculpture should speak its own language so distinctly as •
to need no aid from letters.

11. Child seated on a bank, intently gazing at a butterfly
that has just lighted on the back of its hand. For a Hunga-
rian nobleman.

66 Catalogue of Works.

12. Statuette of Venus Victrix. For John Lowell, and pre-
sented by him to the Boston Athenaeum.

13. Colossal Group, for the Capitol, by order of Congress.
This work, which was finished in July, 1851, occupied the

artist eight years, besides a delay of four years occasioned by
his not being able in all that time to obtain a block of Serra-
vezza marble suitable to his purpose. It consists of four figures,
a mother and child, an American Indian and the father. This
group illustrates a phasis in the progress of American civiliza-
tion, viz., the unavoidable conflict between the Anglo-Saxon
and aboriginal savage races. The figures of the mother and
child were entirely remodelled in the years 1846 and '47.

14. Statue of the Angel Abdiel retiring from the assemblage
of rebellious Angels ; from Milton's Paradise Lost.

15. Monument to his friend Giusti, the Italian poet; erected
at Pescia, Tuscany.

16. Bas-relief, representing an artist whose labors are sus-
pended by the failure of the light by which he is working.
He is seated in an attitude of pensive dejection, while a hand
from a cloud supplies oil to the lamp.

17. Bas-relief of Castor and Pollux.

18. Venus, contending for the golden apple. It is of
heroic size, that of the Venus of Milo. This statue was
much admired in Florence, and Browning, the English
poet, urged Greenough to send it to the World's Fair,
in London.

It was modelled entirely in plaster of Paris (as was also the

Catalogue of Works. 57

second group of the mother and child) by a new process.
"The merit of this invention seems to be shared between
Greenough and Powers. They commenced about the same
time to make trials in this material, and by interchange of
experiences and views the method was perfected. The gain to
artists by this invention is two-fold ; plaster of Paris does not
expand like clay, and there is no need of the precarious and
expensive process of casting."

19. Ideal Bust. Our Saviour crucified.

20. Two Ideal Busts of Heloise.

21. Ideal Bust of Lucifer.

22. Ideal Bust of the Graces.

23. Ideal Bust. The Genius of Love.

Besides the above enumerated statues and bas-relief, he exe-
cuted a large number of busts ; among these were portraits of
John Adams and of John Q. Adams, Henry Clay, Mrs. R.
Gilmor, Josiah Quincy, Sen., S. Appleton, Jonathan Mason,
Thos. Cole, the late celebrated landscape-painter, N. P. "Willis,
the Marquess Gino Capponi, for many years a personal friend
of Greenough, and latterly Prime Minister of Tuscany, John
Jacob Astor, Cooper, and others.

ESSAYS

BY

HORATIO GBEENOTJGH.

[Greenough commenced a series of Lectures on Art during the
last months of his life ; two of these had been written and delivered,
and copious notes for others were found among his papers ; while
abroad he also wrote several essays on this and kindred subjects ;
and man} 1 of his letters are valuable and interesting ; these it is pro-
posed to collect in a subsequent volume. The selections now
published will indicate the scope of his inquiries, and the originality
of his views, and serve as a foretaste of more elaborate specimens.]

AESTHETICS AT WASHINGTON.

An American citizen, who has gone abroad to study a
refined art, presents himself before his fellow-countrymen at
disadvantage. To the uninitiated, his very departure from
these shores is an accusation of the fatherland. If he sail away
to strike the whale on the Pacific, or load his hold with the
precious teeth, and gums, and sands of Africa, it is well ; but
to live for years among Italians, Frenchmen, and Germans, for
the sake of breathing the air of high art, ancient and modern,
this is shrewdly thought by many to show a lack of genius,
whose boast it is to create, and we are often asked triumphantly
if nature is not to be found here on this continent. They who
thus reason and thus feel, are not aware of the peculiar position
of the aspirant to artistic activity in these States. They see
that lawyers and statesmen, divines, physicians, mechanics, all
are here developed, are said to be home grown, nay, often also
self-made. They forget that all the elements of our civilization
have been imported. They forget that our schools and col-
leges, our libraries and churches, are filled with the most mate-

G2 ./Esthetics at Washington.

rial proof, that Greek and Roman thought is even now modi-
fying and guiding our intellectual development. A moment's
attention will enable them to perceive that the American stu-
dent of art only seeks to effect for his own department of
knowledge a like transfer of rudimental science, and at this late
day, make the form of our culture harmonious with its essential
and distinctive character.

We are still imbued, deeply imbued, with the stern disregard
of everything not materially indispensable, which was gene-
rated by ages of colonial, and border, and semi-savage life.
We have imported writings on art in abundance, and there is
scarcely a scholar in the land who cannot wield the terms of
dilettantism as glibly as a European professor ; but unfortu-
nately for us, the appreciation of an sesthetical theory without
substantial art, is as difficult as to follow a geometric demon-
stration without a diagram. It is sterile and impotent, as is all
faith without works.

If the arts of design could have simply remained in a nega-
tive state, like seeds buried in autumn, to await the action of a
more genial season, we should be justified in postponing, even
now, their cultivation. But like the Bourgeois gentilhomme,
who talked prose from his boyhood without being aware of it,
we have been compelled both to design and to adorn, and our
efforts, from their nature, must remain monuments of chaotic
disorder in all that relates to ./Esthetics. In a word, we have
negative quantities to deal with, before we can rise to zero. I
do not mean to say that the beautiful has not been sought and

^Esthetics at Washington. 63

found amongst us. I wish, and I hope to show, that we have
done more, in a right direction, than has been appreciated ;
much in a wrong direction, that must be examined and repu-
diated.

I am sensible of the disadvantage under which I labor, in
speaking of matters to which I have devoted my attention for
many years. I regret that I have no such right to sympathy
and to support as that set forth by the author of a recent work
when he says, " I have no qualifications for a critic in art, and
make no pretensions to the character. I write only for the
great multitude, as ill instructed in this sphere as I cheerfully
admit myself." When the writer of that profession shall have
learned what the main qualifications for a critic on art really
are, I cannot believe that he will cheerfully renounce them ;
and far as I am from a personal acquaintance with the great
multitude, I cannot believe that one " as ill instructed as them-
selves" is the exact person whom they would depute to deal
with matters which, to say the least of them, require some
training.

It is the great multitude that has decided the rank of the
statesmen, the poets, and the artists of the world. It is the
great multitude for whom all really great things are done, and
said, and suffered. The great multitude desires the best of
everything, and in the long run is the best judge of it. I have
said this much in relation to the sesthetical observations of this
writer, because, though I generally sympathize with his views,
and often admire the expression of them, I look upon the

G4 ^Esthetics at Washington.

ground lie here takes, as one too often taken — in itself untena-
ble, and apt to mislead by an exaggerated expression of
modesty. Substantially, it is analogous to the conduct of one
who should commence by declaring that all men are free and
equal, and go on to give orders to the right and left as to valets.
Fain would I also lay claim to the title of self made man ;
indeed, I graduated at Harvard, in 182-, which they who knew
the school will allow was near enough self-making to satisfy
any reasonable ambition. But since then I have been indebted
to very many for light as for assistance.

• If there were in our character or in our institutions, aught
that is at war with art in the abstract, I for one would be silent,
preferring the humblest labor, if any labor deserve the name of
humbie, to the development of an influence adverse to Ameri-
can freedom. I speak of art now, because I think I see that it
is a want — a want widely felt, deeply felt — an intellectual want,
a social want, an economical want — and that to a degree which
few seem to suspect. I believe that these states need art as a
visible exponent of their civilization.* They call for it as a sal-

* In the speech of Mr. Smith, of Alabama, in explanation of a resolu-
tion offered by him in relation to Kossuth, I find the following passage :
"I will make another observation, and that is in reference to the idea
of establishing republican governments in Europe. Kew governments
there are constantly rising and falling, and they have been trying to
establish republican governments for the last thousand years; have
they ever succeeded? and why not? Because of their antiquities and
their monuments, breathing, smacking, and smelling of nobility and roy-
alty, and because half of the people are magnates."

I take note of this remark, because I believe there is good, solid truth

^Esthetics at Washington. 65

vation from merely material luxury and sensual enjoyment, they
require it as the guide and ornament of inevitable structure and
manufacture.

Joyfully have the governing men of England, France, and
Germany beheld in the United States that policy which has
denied all national education, except for the purpose of war and
trade. Joyfully have they seen the individual States equally
blind to the swift coming requirements of this people ; and they
have founded and perfected schools of design, of which the
abler pupils are employed in illustrating the national history ;
the lower talents fill the factory, the foundry, and the atelier,
to fashion fabrics for ourselves. From Boston to New Orleans
no house, no tavern, no bar-room, I had almost said, that does
not give proof, by the tawdry spawn of European manufacture,
of our tribute to their savoir /aire, and their appreciation of our

in it. " Quoi si je pourrai fripponner quelque chose pour etayer mon
pauvre petit livre!" I should have placed the magnates first in the
list of obstacles to republican progress, but I will not quarrel about pre-
cedence. The statesmen may be allowed to settle this matter.

I rejoice to find that American legislators have found out the value
and significance of monuments, and of antiquities in their political influ-
ence. May we not expect that our civilization and our institutions will
obtain this support from Congress ? I hope, in a subsequent paper, to
urge this matter more fully. I will now merely state that there stands
in the studio of Mr. Powers, at Florence, a statue of America, which is
not only a beautiful work of art, but which "breathes, smacks, and
smells" of Republicanism and Union. If placed conspicuously, by Mr.
Walter, in one of the new wings of the Capitol, it would be a monu-
ment of Union. The sooner it is done, the sooner it will become an
" antiquity."

4*

66 ./Esthetics at Washington.

taste. But what, it will be asked, lias the development of art
to do with manufactures ? High art stands in relation to manu-
factures and all the so-called lower trades, where high literature
stands in relation to social and to civil life. Ask how much of
the fruit of high culture and mental training reaches the public
through the forum, the pulpit, and the diurnal press, and you will
have the measure of the influence of pure art on structure and
manufacture in all their branches. Who in England urged this
matter upon the attention of Parliament, until the best models
of Greece and Italy were placed within reach of every manu-
facturing population ? The Board of Trade. That body caused
to be translated from foreign languages, and illustrated by ela-
borate drawings, the most approved works of Munich, Berlin,
and Paris. They have ransacked, at great cost, the mediaeval
magnificence of Italy, to find new forms, and add a grace to the
products of their looms, their potteries, and their foundries.
Does any statesman fancy that these governments have been
invaded by a sudden love of the sublime and beautiful ? I
believe that they who watch our markets and our remittances,
will agree with me, that their object is to keep the national
mints of America at work for themselves; and that the beau-
tiful must, to some extent, be cultivated here, if we would avoid
a chronic and sometimes an acute tightness of the money
market. The statistics of our annual importation of wares,
which owe their preference solely to design, will throw a light
on this question that will command the attention of the most
thrifty and parsimonious of our legislators.

^Esthetics at Washington. 67

In founding a school of art, we have an obstacle to sur-
mount, viz. a puritanical intolerance thereof. The first work
of sculpture by an American hand exhibited in this country,
executed for the illustrious Cooper, was a group of children.
The artist was rebuked and mortified by loud complaints of
their nudity. Those infantine forms roused an outcry of cen-
sure, which seemed to have exhausted the source whence it
sprang, since all the harlot dancers who have found an El
Dorado in these Atlantic cities, have failed to reawaken it. I
say seemed to have exhausted it — but only seemed — for the
same purblind squeamishness which gazed without alarm at the
lascivious Fandango, awoke with a roar at the colossal naked-
ness of Washington's manly breast. This fact will show how
easy it is to condemn what is intrinsically pure and innocent,
to say the least ; how difficult to repress what is clearly bad and
vicious. They who speculate upon the corrupt tastes of a pub-
lic, when they have learned that genteel comedy is neglected,
that tragedy is unattractive, that galleries of painting and sta-
tuary are unknown in a large and wealthy community, such
speculators take their Bayaderes thither as to a sure market.
They know that a certain duration of abstinence, voluntary or
forced, makes garbage tolerable, and ditch water a luxury. I
do not venture to hope that even high art will abolish " cakes
and ale," but I trust before many years are elapsed no usee
Terpsichore of Paris or Vienna will be able to show half a mil-
lion as a measure of our appetite for the meretricious.

I wish not to be misunderstood for a moment as recommend-

6S .^Esthetics at Washington.

ing a Smithsonian school, with a hierarchy of dignitaries in art.
I have elsewhere stated my conviction that such a system is
hostile to artistic progress. I desire to see working Normal
schools of structure and ornament, organized simply but effect-
ively, and constantly occupied in designing for the manufac-
turers, and for all mechanics who need rcsthetical guidance in
their operations — schools where emulation shall be kindled by
well considered stimuli, and where all that is vitally important
in building or ornament shall be thoroughly taught and con-
stantly practised. I know not how far the limit of congres-
sional action may admit the founding of such schools by the
central government. Should it be impossible to interest Con-
gress in the matter, I am not without hope that some, at least,
of the State legislatures may effect it; and, failing this
resource, I hope that associated individuals will combine for this
object. I cannot but believe that a report, called for by Con-
gress, on the amount of goods imported, which owe the favor
they find here, to design, would show the importance of such
schools in an economical point of view. I believe that such a
report would show that the schools which we refuse to support
here, we support abroad, and that we are heavily taxed for
them.

It surely cannot be asking too much that the seat of Govern-
ment, where the national structures rise, and are yearly in-
creasing in number and importance, should present a specimen
of what the country can afford in material and workmanship,
in design and ornament. If this were resolved on, a stimulus

^Esthetics at Washington. 69

would-be given to exertion, while the constant experience here
acquired would soon perfect a school of architectural design.

The defects of the stone of whicfi the Capitol was built,
could have been no secret to Mr. Bulfinch. Had there existed
a board, or a school, or any other responsible depository of
architectural experience, we should not have witnessed the
deplorable recurrence to the same quarries for the construction
of the Patent Office and the Treasury buildings. The outlay
in paint alone, to which recourse has been had in order to
sheathe this friable material, would have maintained a school
which would have saved us from the blunder, not to mention
the great advantage we should have derived from its designs
and its pupils. Had the amount expended in white lead been
invested, a fund would have now accumulated sufficient to
reface them all with marble. I am convinced that true
economy would at this moment order the Potomac stone,
wherever it has been used, to be immediately replaced by a
better material.

Setting aside, however, the question of economy, and look-
ing at the question of propriety, can anything be more absurd
than to expend millions upon noble pieces of masonry, and
then to smear them with lead — thereby reducing them to a
level with the meanest shingle palace 1 Stone among build-
ing materials, standing 'where gold stands among metals, to
paint stone is like covering gold with tin-foil. So far has this
been carried, that even in the Rotunda, where no conceivable
motive could exist for the vandalism, the entire masonry has

*70 ^Esthetics at Washington.

been painted, and that too of various tints, so that I will ven-
ture to affirm that many carry away the idea, that the whole
is but a piece of carpenter's work. The treatment of the
Treasury buildings, where the granite basement has been
painted of one color, the columns of a second, and the wall
behind them of a third, where even the lamp-posts have been
daubed with divers tints, like a barber's pole, is noticed with
priceless naivete in an important public document as a neat
piece of work. What shall we say of the balustrades, where
massive iron bars have been driven bodily into the columns,
as though a column in a first class building might be treated
like a blind wall in the basest structure, and that, too, with-
out a shadow of need ? What shall we say of the iron railings
that obtrude upon the eye about the blockings of the Patent
Office, and veil, with their inharmonious blackness, the organ-
ization of that building ? What of the one slender chimney
of red brick, which peers over the broken profile of the marble
Post Office ? Will any adept in the science of construction
explain why the gas light which is seen at the eastern
entrance of the Capitol, was made to hang with so many feet
of tiny pipe, and then secured by shabby wires driven into the
columns ? Would any person conversant with the proprieties
of building tolerate such a slovenly arrangement in a private
house, or in a private stable, if columns formed a feature of
that stable ? Do not such absurd and ignorant malpractices
look as if a barbarous race had undertaken to enjoy the mag-
nificence of a conquered people, and not known how to set

^Esthetics at Washington. 11

about it ? Does any one fancy that the uninstructed multitude
does not feel these incongruities ? It is not so. As well may
you hope to sin against grammar in your speeches, and
against decency and self-respect in your dress or deportment,
and expect that it will pass unobserved.

The effect produced by the grounds and shrubbery in the
neighborhood of the Capitol deserve a moment's attention.
There is somewhat in flower beds and fancy gardening, with
corbeilles of ephemeral plants, so out of all keeping with the
character and functions of this edifice, as to give the spectator
a painful sense that the idea of the adaptation of grounds to
buildings has never recurred to*>those whose duty it was to
look after these matters. Trees and verdure are beautiful,
and flowers still more so, but they are impertinent adjuncts
to the Capitol of the United States, and where they veil and
obstruct the view of the facade, as at the Post Office, are insuf-
ferable. The creeping vines that have been led over the arches
which support the platform in rear of the Naval monument,
are a grosser instance of misguided search after the picturesque.
If these arches are properly constructed, the vines are imperti-
nent, for they hide their articulation. "Whether well or ill
built, the proximity of these vines is a destructive element, use-
lessly added to the inevitable wear of the weather. Further, if
the principle which guided their introduction here be a sound
one, logical sequence and harmony call for their appearance in
other like situations.

The recent appointment of a gentleman of approved taste to

72 ^Esthetics at Washington.

superintend the arrangement of the public grounds, gives well
founded reasons to hope that these, and the like unsightly
anomalies, will disappear ; and that all, at least within his
department, will be made in harmony with the character and
purposes of the chief edifice of the country.

The position of the group of Columbus and the Indian girl
is anomalous and absurd ; anomalous, because it invades the
front view of the portico, chokes the facade, and hides another
statue by the same artist ; absurd, because it treats the building
as somewhat on which to mount into conspicuous view, not as
a noble and important vase which it is called humbly to adorn
and illustrate. The statue *bf Washington is surrounded by
dwarf cypress and clumps of rose bush. These are impertinent
and ridiculous — impertinent because they hide the pedestal and
obstruct the view of the inscription, thus overlaying the inten-
tion of the monument, and that for the mere display of ephe-
meral vegetation, a phenomenon, however attractive, not here
in place — ridiculous, because they seem as if intended in some
way to help and eke out the sculpture ; which, when a statue
of this class requires it, must be done by replacing it with
something worthy to stand alone. The grass within the rail-
ing, if cut close, destroys the monumental effect, by the exhi-
bition of frequent care ; if neglected, offends by its rank growth
and decay. The railings which have been placed about the
statues of the Capitol accuse a want of respect for the public
property. They accuse it without remedying it ; for in spite
of their protection, perhaps because of it, the statues of Colum-

^Esthetics at Washington. 73

bus and of Washington have received more injury in the few
years that they have been so guarded, than many figures
wrought before the birth of Christ have suffered in coming to
us throuffh. the so-called dark ao-es. I have several times seen
boys at play on the portico of the Capitol ; which, if right,
makes it wrong there to place costly sculptures. If I protest
against iron railings around statuary, it is because I believe they
avail not for their object. I trust to the intelligence of the
many to do justice to the artistic efforts made for their sake.
In the end, I believe the people will be the best guardians of
public works here, as they have proved themselves elsewhere.
Four lamps have been placed around the statue of Washing-
ton ; by night they light only the feet of the figure, by day
they exactly obstruct two of the principal views of it. I doubt
not that the person who so placed these lights meant to do the
statue a service. He probably never heard of "the eight
views" of a statue. These ever-jarring principles of magnifi-
cence and economy — laying out millions for dignity, and deny-
ing the thousands necessary to insure care, intelligence, and
taste, in their conservation and exposition — produce a certain
compound of pretension and meanness of effect, highly to be
deprecated in great public works. I say highly to be depre-
cated, for, however they who have given no attention to art
and its influences may be surprised at the assertion — such a
chaos cannot be daily seen with impunity. What at first
shocked soon becomes familiar, and the susceptibility to healthy
impressions from the display of order, harmony, logical depend-

74 ^Esthetics at Washington.

ence, and adaptation, are weakened, if not destroyed in the
observer.

I have mentioned some flagrant instances of the want of care
or of knowledge on the part of those to whom the national
buildings have been intrusted. This strain of remark might be
continued until we had passed in review almost every detail of
the structure and ornaments of the public works. It is an
ungrateful task. Enough has been said to show that the evi-
dent intention of Congress to render these buildings and
grounds worthy of the nation, both in their construction and
maintenance, has thus far been very imperfectly effected. I
will now state what I believe to be the reason why so much
outlay has produced so unsatisfactory a result. First : I believe
that the absence of any clear and distinct ideas of what is
becoming, dignified, and proper in the premises, lies at the root
of the evil. For this no one is to blame. The wants of this
people have called — imperatively called — the active and able
men of the country to pursuits far removed from an investiga-
tion of the beautiful, either in theory or in practice. These
minds have been engaged in laying the foundations, broad and
deep, of a mighty empire. They have reared the walls — they
have distributed the blessed light and blessing air throughout
the vast structure. They have tamed the forest, subdued the
wilderness, and spread the benign influence of the gospel and
of education from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. They have
left to later days and men of other mould the task of throwing
around the pillars of the State the garlands of a fine artistic

^Esthetics at Washington. 75

culture. Had they been men intent upon the questions that
occupy us now, they had been as unfit for the task imposed on
them, as the land was unprepared for their labors. But untu-
tored as they were in the mysteries of art, an instinct, great,
noble, and unerring, guided their decision in respect to the
visible attributes of this Metropolis. The selection of this site,
the ground plan of this city, show the outline of a master ; and
years must elapse ere any school which we can found will be
capable of worthily filling it. Secondly : I believe that the
heterogeneous and chaotic character of these buildings and
grounds arises from an ill-judged interference with technical
design and arrangement on the part of men in authority, whe-
ther in the legislative or executive branches of government.
Since our institutions carry with them, as a necessary conse-
quence, a frequent change in the personnel of government, it is
clear that if each succeeding wave of deputed authority is to
leave the impress of its taste and its will upon the public struc-
tures, these must, ere long, be but a patchwork of as many
whims, fancies, and artistic dogmas, as have found favor in the
eyes of the temporary occupants of place, unless some standard
can be established which all will recognise — a consummation
not now to be hoped for. I believe that this country is alone
in referring matters of art to legislative committees. In Eng-
land committees supervise and report, and Parliament criticises
and condemns, but the artist is not interfered with, in his own
province. The law maxim is held good in that case. I have
been told that the invention of the alto relievo upon the tym-

7 6 ^Esthetics at Washington.

panum, was due to Mr. Adams. If so, it was an unhappy
exertion of his great powers. Sculpture, when it adorns build-
ings, is subordinate to them ; and when the sculptor invades
the tympanum, he must fill it, or he produces a meagre and
mean effect. Mr. Adams knew all of art that books and much
observation could teach him, but he could not, of course, be
aware of the many proprieties violated in that invention. The
work has another defect as sculpture. It is the translation of
rhetoric into stone — a feat often fatal to the rhetoric, always
fatal to the stone.

As a most honorable contrast to ever conflicting claims of
private taste and whim to obtain utterance in the public works,
I feel pleasure and pride in observing the course adopted by
the architect who has been honored with the task of adding
the wings of the Capitol. That architect, trained in the sever-
est school of ancient art, had he been called on for a new
building, would surely have attempted something very different
from the actual Capitol. Called to enlarge it, he has sought
to divest himself of every prepossession that would interfere
with its harmony as a whole. He has approached his task
with reverence. He has sought to keep company with his pre-
decessor. This is not only honorable and just as regards La-
trobe, but can take nothing from his own well earned reputa-
tion. Speaking now and in view of the mere model, I doubt if
it be even in his power so widely to extend the facade, without
painfully isolating the cupola, and leaving the present edifice
too low, too wanting in mass and weight, to characterize a

^Esthetics at Washington. 11

centre. Avoiding this defect, he will triumph over a great
obstacle. What the architect has here decided in reference to
the original design of the Capitol, seems worthy of all emula-
tion on the part of such as, by the vicissitudes of office, may
have charge of the national buildings.

In all remarks upon important public edifices, there is a two-
fold subject under contemplation. First : The organic structure
of the works. Second : Their monumental character. To
plant a building firmly on the ground — to give it the light that
may, .the air that must, be needed — to apportion the spaces for
convenience — decide their size — and model their shapes for
their functions — these acts organize a building. No college of
architects is a quorum to judge this part of the task. The
occupants alone can say if they have been well served ; time
alone can stamp any building as solid. The monumental cha-
racter of a building has reference to its site — to its adaptation
in size and form to that site. It has reference also to the
external expression of the inward functions of the building — to
adaptation of its features and their gradation to its dignity and
importance, and it relates, moreover, to that just distinction
which taste always requires between external breadth and inte-
rior detail.

To ascertain what the organic requirements of a building-
like the Capitol are, is, in itself, a most laborious task. To
meet them requires all the science we possess. Have we not
seen the House of Lords, in spite of all the experience and the
knowledge brought to bear upon the vast outlay that reared it,

78 ^Esthetics at Washington.

pronounced a gewgaw by the men who were obliged to work
therein ? Discomfort and annoyance soon find utterance. De-
coration and magnificence in such cases, like the velvet and
gilding of a ship's cabin, seen with sea-sick eyes, aggravate our
discontent. Nor is a defective arrangement merely uncom-
fortable ; it may prove costly beyond all belief. I have been
assured by one of the chief officers of a department, that one-
half of the employes of his section of the administration, were
required only by the blundering and ignorant arrangement of
the edifice. To say that such oversights are inevitable, is an
unjust accusation of the art. When those who are called to
the task of lodging one of the departments of the Government,
shall make organization the basis of their design, instead of a
predetermined front, which often deserves to have the inverted
commas of quotation affixed to it, we shall hear no such com-
plaints as I have above related.

The men who have reduced locomotion to its simplest ele-
ments, in the trotting wagon and the yacht America, are nearer
to Athens at this moment than they who would bend the Greek
temple to every use. I contend for Greek principles, not Greek
things. If a flat sail goes nearest wind, a bellying sail, though
picturesque, must be given up. The slender harness and tall
gaunt wheels are not only effective, they are beautiful — for they
respect the beauty of a horse, and do not uselessly task him.
The English span is a good one, but they lug along more pre-
tension than beauty ; they are stopped in their way to claim
respect for wealth and station ; they are stopped for this, and,

^Esthetics at Washington. *79

therefore, easily passed by those who care not to seem, but are.
To prefer housings to horseflesh, and trappings to men, is alike
worthy of a savage.

THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT.

A national monument to Washington has been designed,
and is in process of construction. A lithographic print of this
design is before the public. It represents an obelisk, rising out
of a low, circular building, whose exterior presents a Greek
colonnade of the Doric order. A fac-simile of the endorsement
of some of our most distinguished citizens recommends this
design to their fellow countrymen. I propose to examine the
invention.

The prominent peculiarity of the design before us is the inter-
marriage of an Egyptian monument — whether astronomical, as
I believe, or Phallic, as contended by a Boston critic, matters
not very much — with a Greek structure, or one of Greek ele-
ments. I do not think it is in the power of art to effect such
an amalgamation, without corrupting and destroying the spe-
cial beauties and characters of the two elements. The one,
simple even to monotony, may be defined a gigantic expression
of unity. The other a combination of organized parts, assem-
bled for a common object. The very perfection of their forms,
as exponents of so distinct characters, makes them protest
against juxtaposition.

80 ^Esthetics at Washington.

If the union of Egyptian mass and weight with Greek com-
bination and harmony be heterodox, the order in which they
are here displayed is even more strikingly a violation of pro-
priety. The complex, subdivided, comparatively light Greek
structure, is placed as a basis, a foundation. The Egyptian
mass of stone rises above it. When this arrangement is stated,
I must think that its palpable absurdity is demonstrated. It
may be urged that those weaker and more slender columns veil
a massive foundation within them. We had guessed this
already, because a miracle alone could otherwise sustain the
weight. The pillars hide the strength of the structure, hence
their impertinence, as an architectural feature. It is incum-
bent upon edifices, first to be strong; secondly, to look
strong. We have read of a colossus of brass, with feet of
clay, and the image is striking. To an architect, Egyptian
weight sustained, in appearance, by Greek pillars, is not less so.
That buildings, in rising from the earth, be broad and simple
at their bases, that they grow lighter not only in fact but in
expression, as they ascend, is a principle established. The laws
of gravitation are at the root of this axiom. The spire obeys
it. The obelisk is its simplest expression.

Waiving the impropriety of a Doric colonnade as a basis for
an obelisk, I object to that order for a circular structure. The
Doric capital, in its upper member, echoes and parallels the
entablature. In a circular structure, this is impossible, without
maiming the order. Your capital protests against its entabla-
ture. For circular structures, in the temple of Vesta, and that

^Esthetics at Washington. 81

beautiful ruin at Tivoli for instance, the Corinthian capital has
been adopted ; but the Corinthian is too manifestly absurd a
basis for a plain shaft of stone.

This obelisk is made to differ essentially from the most
admired specimens of that kind of monument. The differences
are, first, in the relative diameters at the summit and base;"
second, in the relative height of the pyramidion which forms
the apex. In Cleopatra's needle, the base is a full diagonal of
the summit of the prism. In this the base is less than that
diagonal. By this departure from example, topheaviness has
been obtained. The altitude of the pyramidion, in Cleopatra's
needle, is equal to the width of the base, and is, of course, a
very acute angle, terminating gradually the lofty shaft. In
this, the pyramidion forms an obtuse angle, its altitude is so
small that a little distance will obliterate it altogether, and the
obelisk must assume a truncated, and of course unfinished
appearance.

When Michael Angelo was wending his way from Florence

to Rome, to assume the charge of finishing St. Peter's Church,

his servant related that, on reaching the summit of the Apen-

nine, near Poggibonsi, he turned his horse and sat gazing long

and intently upon the dome of Bruneleschi, the giant cupola of

the Florentine cathedral. After some time he was heard to

growl, " Better than thee, I cannot ; like thee, I will not." The

result was the dome of St. Peter's. Michael Angelo "took the

responsibility," as such men always will. He did it at his

peril, as all men must. Implicit conformity to precedent obli-

5

82 AESTHETICS AT WASHINGTON.

terates and annihilates the individual; violation of it, not jus-
tified by. theory, or by practical result, sets the individual on no
enviable pedestal. A throne may become a pillory.

The obelisk has to my eye a singular aptitude, in its form
and character, to call attention to a spot memorable in history.
It says but one word, but it speaks loud. If I understand its
voice, it says, Here ! It says no more. For this reason it was
that I designed an obelisk for Bunker Hill, and urged argu-
ments _ that appeared to me unanswerable against a column
standing alone.* If this be the expression of the obelisk, I
object to the site of the proposed monument.

* The column used as a form of monument has two advantages.
First, it is a beautiful object — confessedly so. Secondly, it requires no
study or thought ; the formula being ready made to our hands.

I object, as regards the first of these advantages, that the beauty of a
column, perfect as it is, is a relative beauty, and arises from its adapta-
tion to the foundation on which it rests, and to the entablature which
it is organized to sustain. The spread of the upper member of the
capital calls for the entablature, cries aloud for it. The absence of that
burden is expressive either of incompleteness, if the object be fresh and
new, or of ruin if it bear the marks of age. The column is, therefore,
essentially fractional — a capital defect in a monument, which should
always be independent. I object to the second advantage as being one
only to the ignorant and incapable. I hold the chief value of a monu-
ment to be this, that it affords opportunity for feeling, thought, and
study, and that it not only occasions these in the architect, but also in
the beholder.

I have urged these arguments in conversation, and have sometimes
been met by the declaration that my hearer did not feel their force as
against what he liked in itself. I may state here that such a feeling
places him in the same category with those to whom it is indifferent

^Esthetics at Washington. 83

I protest also against the enormous dimensions of this struc-
ture. It is another example of the arithmetical sublime — an
attempt to realize in art the physical truth that many little
things united form one great one ; which in art is not true,
A monolithe, a single shaft of granite, has a value like that of
the diamond — a value which increases in a geometric ratio
with its weight. Why ? Because its extraction from the
quarry, its elaboration and safe erection show not only wealth,
but science. The temple of Minerva, at Athens — the marvel of
ancient as of modern critics — was scarce larger than one of our
schoolhouses. It was great, but not large. It was a jewel,
both of design and structure. It was an embodiment of
thought.

To be impressive, a monument must contain thought and
feeling. Flendum est primum ipsi tibi ! Your five hundred

whether a book he held with the right or with the wrong side up. It
accuses want of vision or want of instruction.

But ancient Rome possessed two of these monuments, London has
two, and Paris has two. To this I will only answer that London and
Paris have confessedly followed Rome in this matter, and Rome was
more eager to seize upon and appropriate the Greek magnificence than
capable of digesting and assimilating it. But the attempting now to
argue against columns, so universally admired as monuments, is pre-
sumptuous. I object to this objection that it is not American.

The column used as an integral monument, however its fractional
character may be disguised by urns, statues, or other objects placed
upon it, belongs to the numerous and respectable family of makeshifts
— taking a form or object designed for one purpose, and applying it to
another — which is a violation of the first sublime law of creation.
Creation supposes that neither material nor power is wanting.

84 ^Esthetics at Washington.

feet of granite built as chimneys are, stone upon stone, is a
failure. It shows how much you are willing to spend to have
done with it. " Ilfaut 'payer de sa peau /"

A structure which rises five hundred feet from the ground
and bears the name of Washington, must form a unique fea-
ture in this metropolis. It must command the attention of
every one, be he American or foreigner, who sees its lofty shaft
towering into the blue, and holding the sunshine after twilight
is grey below. What will be its effect artistically speaking ?
Kneading into incongruous contact elements hitherto only
jumbled by conquest and ruin — truncated— bare — without gra-
dation and without finale — standing upon crumbling detail —
heavy above and light below — it will be a symbol of huge
aspiration and chaotic impotence.

Monuments to really great men are opportunities on which
to hang the proofs of the development of art. The great need
them not. We need them. The tombs of the Medici embody
the theory of Buonarotti. The statue of Frederic is the apo-
theosis of Prussian sculpture.

The obelisk which stands at the entrance of the Champs
Elysees is typical of African conquest. Like the captive ele-
phants led in a Roman show, its exotic form gives significance
to the triumph that placed it there. The monolithes that tower
before the Roman Basilicas have also a certain propriety in the
residence of an absolute temporal prince, who is at the same
time assumed to be the vicar of Christ. All forms may be
collected without, as all tongues are spoken within.

^Esthetics at Washington. 85

I am aware that there is scarce an architect in the country
that could not have demonstrated the absurdity of the monu-
ment I have examined, and have thus prevented its consumma-
tion. Why were they all silent ?

THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS.

The general aspect of this picture is striking. The idea of
representing these heroes of our history, engaged in prayer on
the deck of the good ship that was to waft them to these
shores, was an ingenious and a happy one. The composition
of lines is worthy of Mr. Weir, and shows a profound study of
that very difficult branch of his art. There is no clap-trap or
vulgar effect in the arrangement — all are in their places, and a
pleasing variety has been created without any theatrical make-
shift. The subject has been treated with due reverence — con-
scientiously. It is a work of good omen.

The arrangement of the chiaro-scuro is a puzzle to my under-
standing. I see a circle of light inclosing a broad mass of half
shadow. In this half shadow lies the pith and marrow of the
subject matter of this composition. He who prays — he who
holds the sacred volume — the mother with her ailing child —
all these are in twilight, while the evidence and flash of day are
reserved for figures half averted — piebald silks, and gleaming
armor, with other objects essentially accessory.

86 Esthetics at Washington.

If any deep-laid train be here to rouse the attention and
chain it to the important features of this page, it has missed its
object with me. I long to haul a sail aside, if sail it be that
makes this mischief, and let in a shaft of light upon that pray-
erful face. I am out of humor with that dress, so real, which
mocks my desire to see men. The armor is true Milan steel.
The men are foggy. The sail is real — the maker would
swear to his stitches. The hobnailed shoes are so new and
actual that I smell leather as I stand there. To balance the
execution, the hair should be less conventional — the flesh, too,
more transparent and life-like. I see no gleam from any eye
in all that company ; but the iron ring in yonder foot of the
sail twinkles ambitiously. This inversion of the true law of
emphasis is unaccountable to me in this master. Had I any
hope of influencing him, I would beg of him, while yet it is
day, to modify the effect of this work. If I despaired of bring-
ing the heads and hands up to the still-life, I would put the
latter down, not only in light but in elaboration and illusion,
until it kept its place.

Light in a composition is like sound and emphasis in deli-
very. You may make a figure or a group tell darkly amid a
glare for certain purposes ; not when the nuances of physi-
ognomy and emotion are essential. Awfully have I seen in a
broad, illuminated group, a cloud darken Judas as he gave the
traitor kiss to our Lord. The masters of Venice have more
than once succeeded in giving to figures in shadow all the
roundness, glow, and reality, admitted in the highest light ;

^Esthetics at Washington. 8*7

where that power of pencil is, who could deny the right quid-
libet audendi ? To rny sense, here are figures more important
than these on the foreground, which are flat, and cold,
and dim.

"Who can doubt that Mr. Weir, had he lived in an age and
country where art was prized, would have wrought many
great, instead of this one very respectable picture ? I mean for
the government.

As I have ventured to complain of the Flemish illusion and
microscopic finish of the accessories in this picture, contrasted
as they are by an execution rather dim and vague in the chief
figures, I will further explain my meaning by a contrary exam-
ple in a master-piece of ancient art. In the group of Laocoon
we never weary of admiring the palpitating agony of the
father, the helpless struggles of the sons. The serpents, which
are the causes of this pain and despair, are scarce noticed ;
why ? because the artist wished to chain our attention upon
the human portion of the spectacle. He had no means of veil-
ing the snakes in shadow ; but he has veiled them in the mode
of treatment. There is more imitation, undercutting, illusion,
in one of the grey locks of the old man, than in the serpents'
whole form. Even their heads, as they strike, are made vague
and indistinct. Do we suppose that the sculptor who made
those limbs throb, and that marble mouth hot with pain, was
blind to the beauty of the bossed hide and abdominal rings of
a snake ? This is impossible. He gave only enough of the
snakes to tell the story, because the snakes were not the sub-

88 ^Esthetics at Washington.

jects of his chisel, but the men. This is art; nay, this is
pure art.

The same rule, or a rule analogous to this, decides the treat-
ment of drapery in the higher works of Greece. In decorative
statuary, the Greek showed his feeling for all the minutest
graces, and the most accidental effects of varied stuffs ; and his
hand echoed his eye, and mirrored the whole in stone. But in
his great works, the stuff is one, and all the folds are wrought
broad and simple. He avoids small facts, that he may fasten
your eye upon great truth. To be true to fact, the figure of
Laocoon should be clothed in a priest's dress — clothe him thus,
and the subject is for a painter. The first postulate of sculp-
ture in its essence is, that the veil of convention be rent. Dress
the fighting gladiator, and you might as well sculpture a house,
and tell me that a fighting hero is inside thereof; or say, as
Michael Angel o playfully said, that perfection lies in every rock
that rolls from a quarry. True it is, that perfect beauty is in
every rock ; the art lies in stripping therefrom the dress of chips
that disguise it.

There is one law of painting, as of sculpture, which he alone
can fully understand and obey who is conversant with both
arts. This law commands, to lay the stress of study there
where the art is strong, and avoid, as far as may be, the occa-
sion of showing its impotence. For instance, when in the
fifteenth century they attempted perspective in bas-relief, they
blundered ; because the success is partial, and unable to keep
company with painted perspective, where it is perfect. The

Esthetics at Washington. 89

flying hair and waving draperies of Bernini, are similar proofs
of ill-judged toil. They are a conquest of mechanical difficulty,
and so is the Chinese ivory ball within ball — both belong to the
same family, characterized by Reynolds as laborious effects of
idleness ; both are curious and amusing, and so is a juggler —
but not in the Senate.

THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.

I was wandering, the evening of my arrival in Washington,
after a nine years' absence ; musing as I walked, I found myself
on the banks of the Potomac. I was reflecting upon the sin-
gular contrast between the non-committal, negative nomencla-
ture of these avenues and streets, and the sagacious policy
which, in Europe, makes every name a monument, every
square enforce the creed, every bridge echo an historical fact,
or record a triumph of principle. Nature, in the moral world,
still abhors a vacuum, and I felt that A, B, C street were tem-
porary names — squatters, waiting till the rightful lords of the
domain shall appear.

I pondered in my mind the structure of a monument which
should record the labors, sufferings, and triumph of the cham-
pions of freedom ; — of free thought and belief, of free speech
and free action. The moon was rising, half veiled by long-
straight bars of heavy cloud. She rose out of them, and her

light fell broad and bright on the distant Capitol, with triple

5*

90 ^Esthetics at Washington.

dome and stately columns. My eagerness to rear the pile I
had been dreaming of was hushed. I thought I saw it there
before me ! Those pillars were no more mere shafts of stone ;
Luther and Melancthon, Russell, Hampden, Galileo, Savona-
rola, Sarpi, and a host besides, united in spectral majesty with
the worthies of our own land to uphold the roof! The whole
was cemented with the blood of martyrs. No man that had
cast fear behind him, and done battle for the right, but had
given his grain to form that temple. It stirred me, for I am
not used to the sight. A few weeks earlier I had been seated
beside a pale Dominican friar in the cell where Savonarola
dwelt, and where hung a picture of the Puritan of the Arno,
burning on the great square, and steadied amid the flames, by
masked monks, as he reeled amid the choking heat ; I
thought how different is the fire that here burns. As a mere
unit of humanity I felt consoled. Suddenly, as I walked, the
dark form of the Smithsonian palace rose between me and the
white Capitol, and I stopped. Tower and battlement, and all
that mediaeval confusion, stamped itself on the halls of Con-
gress, as ink on paper ! Dark on that whiteness — complication
on that simplicity ! It scared me. Was it a spectre, or was
not I another Rip Van Winkle who had slept too long? It
seemed to threaten. It seemed to say, I bide my time ! Oh,
it was indeed monastic at that hour !

I never was of those who hold that there is a covered way
from the Vatican to Avernus, on the one hand, corresponding
to that which leads to the Fort of .St. Angelo, on the other. I

^Esthetics at Washington. 91

have seen the Italian clergy nearly — sometimes intimately —
from the prelate to the begging friar ; I have admired their
scholars, and. have loved their men. I revere the bridge over
which oxrr faith has been borne to us. I am not so ignorant
of history as to repudiate the sagacious preservers of the old
Latin civilization. Still, I have brought from that land a fear
of their doctrine, and a hatred of their politics. I fear their
doctrine, because it seems to lull and to benumb the general,
the average mind, while it rouses and spurs the few. I fear it
the more because others do not fear it. I hate their politics
because they are hostile to ours.

This it was that made me shudder at that dark pile — that
castle of authority — that outwork of prescription. On walk-
ing round to the south, I was much relieved ; I could see
through and through the building. This was a departure
from all that I had seen in the real, old turreted fortresses
of theology. It was of good omen.

I am not about to criticize the edifice. I have not quite
recovered from my alarm. There is still a certain mystery
about those towers and steep belfries that makes me uneasy.
This is a practical land. They must be for something.
Is no coup d'etat lurking there ? Can they be merely orna-
ments, like the tassels to a University cap ? Perhaps they
are an allopathic dose adminstered to that parsimony which
so lona" denied to science where to lay her head — contraria
contrariis curantur ! They must have cost much money.
"Bosom'd high in tufted trees," the Smithsonian College

92 ^Esthetics at Washington.

must, in itself, be hereafter a most picturesque object — the
models, whence it has been imitated, are both " rich and rare"
— the connoisseurs may well " wonder how the devil it got
there"

I propose to examine the building hereafter, with reference
to its organization for a distinct purpose.

THE DESECRATION OF THE FLAG.

An American citizen, standing here upon the pavement of
the principal avenue of the Metropolis, sees five ensigns of the
United States flying within sight of each other. Two of these
flags float over the halls of Congress, and announce a session
of both branches of the legislature ; a third adorns the roof of
an omnibus as a gala decoration ; a fourth appears on the
roof-tree of a new hotel as a sign, or perhaps puff extraordinary ;
a fifth marks the site of an engine-house. I cannot but think
that several of these flags are misplaced. Their use at the
Capitol has always struck my eye as appropriate and beautiful.
The other instances of their appearance which I have mention-
ed seem an abuse, a desecration of the national symbol of
Union.

There is always a tendency in every community to seize
upon and make use of that which is public, or of general influ-
ence and widely recognised significance. The same holy
symbol which surmounts the cupola of all Roman Catholic

^Esthetics at Washington. 93

cathedrals, is made in Italy to answer the end which in Eng-
land is effected by a bit of board, bearing the words "commit
no nuisance." When the position which it is desired to protect
is particularly exposed, the cross is repeated ten, twenty, fifty
times, and is even reinforced by verses in honor of saints,
martyrs, and the Holy Virgin. A foreigner is much shocked
by such a practice. The natives smile at his squeamishness —
they are used to it ; yet they all quote " nee Deus intersit, etc."
readily enough upon other occasions.

It is very clear that the national flag, however some persons
may smile at the assertion, has a deep and noble significance,
one which we should hold sacred and do nothing to impair.
Were it a mere " bit of bunting," as the British Foreign Secre-
tary thoughtlessly or artfully styled it, why should we see it
universally paraded?

I believe no one will deny that the colors of the Union
hoisted at the dockyards and arsenals assert the national pos-
session — that they proclaim the nationality of our merchant
ships in foreign parts, and sanction the display of our naval
power. These and the like occasions call for them, and their
appearance has a value and expression of a peculiar kind. Is
it doubtful that the dragging them through the streets by who-
soever chooses so to do, the parading them upon taverns, and
raree-shows, and other like trivial occasions, tends to degrade
and weaken their special meaning and value ? I may be told
that the abuse, if such it be, is rather within the region of taste
than of legal observance. I regret that it is so, because the

94 JEt s t ii e t i c s at Washington.

whole matter has assumed its present aspect, because it is
" nobody's business" to interfere. It is merely as a question of
taste that I speak of it, and as such, I believe that a little reflec-
tion will show, that accustomed as we are to see the flag hung
out " a-propos de bottes" and sometimes hanging downwards
too, so as almost to touch the heads of the horses as they pass,
our indifference to the desecration is merely a measure of use,
and wont, and analogous, though not equal to the obtuseness
of the Catholic, who uses the cross of the Redeemer in lieu of a
by-law or police regulation.

I have heard the right of each citizen to use the national flag
stoutly maintained. I cannot see why the consular seal, or the
gardens of the White House, are not equally at his mercy.
There is another argument which may be called the argumen-
tum ad Buncombe, and which might easily be resorted to to
defend this and the like abuses, viz., That it is peculiarly
American and democratic. The English long asserted a right
to be coarse and uncourteous as a proof of sincerity and frank-
ness. John Bull, they contended, was too honest to be civil.
There is much nonsense of this sort in the old books. Exces-
sive beer-drinking and other gluttonies were upheld as having
some mysterious virtue in them. Sailors used to swear and
blaspheme in a similar way. It was expected of them, and
required no apology. When such notions yielded, as they
must, to reflection and cultivation, it was seen at once that they
had been only abuses or barbarisms ingeniously hitched on to
other qualities, and identified with self-love.

SOCIAL THEORIES.

The plant of civilization, like other plants, springs from God's
ground ; it has its roots in the business and bosoms of men,
throws into the sunshine and the air the stem and branches of
its toil and its culture, blossoms in poetry and heroism, and
bears at length the fruit of science, which is a forbidden fruit
only in its pulp and rind — its seeds are wisdom — not all wis-
dom, for of the seed itself the germ is small part, since there,
too, is a rind and a pulp, even the divine embryo of future
improvement therein wrapped and conserved cannot quicken
unless it die, for this is not a world for Eureka ! and exultation,
but for courage, toil, and brotherly love.

Herein do I find the mischiefs of the older world that they
have sought to establish, check, and stop the rolling ball that
circles round the sun ; and truly they were giants, for though
they could not stop they have shaken it, which is enough,
when you consider who made it and set it going.

The higher development of each civilization is a self-criti-
cism, and along with the condemnation of the past, neatly
packed in silken integument, lies a promise of better things.
But this divine verdict, towering at the top of the plant, can
only wither by staying there ; it must be blown, or shaken, or

96 Social Theories.

plucked thence, and consigned to that earth which we all despise
so truly — the hearts and heads of common men. There must it
find the soil and moisture, blood and tears, which burst its rind
and evolve the godhead within.

The philosophy of Aristotle, the method of Bacon, the poli-
tics of Machiavelli, the social contract of Rousseau, the Tiran-
nide of Alfieri, and the philanthropy of Wilberforce, have by
turns entered into the brains and arms of men who knew not
how to write, else had they been mere figments of the brain.

The rhetorical beauty and elaborate putting out of hand of
these gentlemen's performances mark their position in the
career of culture ; not roots, but lordly seed cups are they.
They have no filaments that pierce the solid earth with a dia-
meter of a spider's web, yet absorb. Not cushioned in cool
halls, sacred to stillness and fragrant with Russia binding, "do
men found dynasties. The sign-manual of the Grand Turk
hath a blood relationship with these cunning fruits of the
human mind, these theories incarnate in rhetoric. It also is
symmetrical, elaborate, pleasing to the eye, but if you will
mark well its contour and features, you shall yet see the bloody
hand laid down on the sheepskin — which was its prototype.

Study thou thy botanies ; it is well ; but still shalt thou
make the good Scotch gardener smile at thy shortcomings ;
study thou thy anatomies ; it is well ; still shall a Silesian pea-
sant cure, while thy utmost book only sufncetk to kill ; study
thou thy electricities and chemistry in thy institute and Royal
College, yet shall one American painter alone report thee to

Social Theories. 97

the antipodes, another row tliee thither ; study thou thy
mechanics, and forces, and mathematics, build thy practical
navies and thy yachts made by scientific norma to outstrip the
world ; yet shall the shrewd eye and rule of thumb suffice to
leave thee seven miles to leeward, while thy queen sees the
discomfiture through her tears.

The voyage of discovery and improvement hath been made
with a captain who came in through the cabin windows, but
there were good dumb boatswains on board, who managed to
say yes and no.

We who cut stone, temper our tools and choose our blocks
by rules that are not in the Encyclopaedia or Conversations-
Lexicon. We are jealous of these knowledges, many of them
are vague, dim guess-work to appearance. When the book-
maker doth cross-question us to extract the kernel of our toil,
we hang the lip and look silly ; under the garb of inarticulate
stupidity lies a grim determination that the idler en^er not into
our rest.

When the great monolithe was erected, by Fontana, if I
remember, in the square of St. Peter's, it was determined to
make that job an incarnation of the means and knowledge of
Eome. This was noble and truly human. They arranged
their tackle, spotted their hands, and a papal edict promised
death to any man who should utter a word, until the engineer
gave the signal that all risk was past. The square was full of
admiring eyes and beating hearts; slowly that huge crystalliza-
tion of Egyptian sweat rose on its basis — five degrees, ten,

98 Social Theories.

i

fifteen, twenty, alas ! There be signs of faltering; no matter!
twenty-five, thirty, forty, forty-three — there is trouble ! Lo !
the hempen cables that, like faithful servants, have thus far
obeyed the mathematician, have suddenly lugged out an order
from God not to hold that base steady any longer on those
terms. The engineer, "who knew the hand-writing, trembled ;
the obedient masons and fachini looked down, then eyed the
threatening mass. The question was, which way it would fall.
Among the crowd, silence! The sun poured down on the
stillness and the despair. Suddenly from out that breathless
mass of men there came a voice, clear as the archangel's trum-
pet, Wet the ropes ! The crowd turned. Tiptoe on a post stood
a fellow in a jacket of humble homespun, his eye full of fire,
and his hair rising with the sense of his responsibility ; from
engineer to humblest fachino that order had instant obe-
dience ; the cables, which only wanted the water cure, bit fiercely
into the glanite ; the windlasses were manned once more, the
obelisk rose to its post and took its stand for centuries. It is
well that there is order and discipline and even the pain of
death for their sake, because the divine man is not stopped by
the latter, in that he bears eternal life, and the sense thereof in
his own bosom.

Thou whose " Lectures and Miscellanies" do fill my mind
with a certain sense of roundness, finish, and courtly present-

ableness, I pray thee, in the fervor of thy faith, to read them in

»
a German beerhouse, and amid throngs of low-browed and big-
jawed Hibernians, stepping here on shore with vast appetite, a

Social' Theories. 99

faith that removes mountains, and imperfect, insufficient know-
ledge of Paley and Chesterfield. There, in the eye that lights
all that bone and muscle, shalt thou see, as in a glass, darkly,
no dearth of hard knocks and bloody noses, standing in dread
array between thy silk stocking theory and any practical, bear-
able system of living together based thereon. I do not mean
to deny that thou hast found a sibylline leaf and deciphered it
well, but there were other sibylline leaves, which were burned
before pride took the alarm, and the secret of making men
learn lovingly — was in those that were burned !

Humbly do I recognise in thy hand the divine hammer that
fashions me, as with resolute grip thou holdest me upon the
anvil ; but the anvil below strikes as hard as thou above, and is
steadier, for it stands on that which talk cannot reach. jSTot
from Pliny's Page or Buffon's elaborations did man learn the
mystery of tiger's tooth or fangs of deadly rattlesnake. The
nio-htshade " never told her love" to the eve : 'twas in the
writhing stomach of experiment that she talked the true, Catho-
lic tongue, English to Englishmen, French to Frenchmen, and
they who saw believed.

Well do I know that God's truth is a two-edged sword, even
such of it as man may wield ; but it is a sword whose handle
burns as fiercely as its edge doth cut, and knowing men pass it
more quickly than the bottle.

Let us make, then, a grand experiment, let us unite as one
man from Maine to Georgia, we who have read and have seen,
and let us seek to change the Anglo-Saxon hat, or wrench one

100 Social Theories.

button from the empire of Brummagem fashion and trans-
atlantic dictation, let us see " quid valeant quid recusent humeri"
let us test our influence with the masses, by a garb made
according to the demonstrable requirement of climate and con-
venience. Verily, I say to thee, that Wall street will greet us
with a guffaw, the maids will titter at us through the blinds,
the rowdies will hustle us in the thoroughfare, and even the
good quiet man will see these things through the plate glass of
his chariot, and say debaxo de su manto. — " Served them right."
While thou warmest in the promise of order, quiet, content,
and cheerful toil, lo ! the Catholic priest hath already occupied
their hearts with the " promise to pay," whose Biddle has yet
to find his Andrew, and whose god-like defenders and consti-
tutional expounders mean to fight for it at last, and not "obso-
lete" it. Not by rushing madly at the differential calculus, or
wielding algebraic signs or logarithmic compend, is the traffic
of the world done, because then there would be too hard a pres-
sure of Sir Isaac Newtons, and Lacroix would lose his balance ;
Cocker alone will carry you to millions, and then you may
maintain those that teach the higher law of calculation — and
make trouble therewith.

Let us seek rather the kino-dom of God and his righteous-
ness, and all these things shall be added unto us ; let us throw
off our coats, and leaving the question of the Trinity an open
one, teach the poor and the lowly that cleanliness is next to
godliness ; let us try to save and cleanse what of womanhood
is left in " poor and common," and seek out little wrongs

Social Theories. 101

as a hidden treasure, that we may put a little right in their
places ; let us frown down waste, for God has only made
enough of each thing ; let us honor toil, for toil is the sun-
shine's brother ; let us seek the heart of man, for there is eter-
nal life, and not ask too much of his head, for that fruit is not
yet ripe.

I cannot as yet adopt thy broad humanity — I will put up
with less breadth, much less — only give me more depth there-
with. I love the concrete, my brother, and I can look Sir
Isaac Newton in the eye without flinching ; I kneel to William
Shakspeare, who guessed to a drop how much oil goes to a
Lombard's salad.

Give me the man who, seated in that fog bank betwixt the
North Sea and the Irish Channel, held horses at the play-house
and found it in his head to teach kings how to wear a crown !
the man who, living amid theatre wenches and pot-house degra-
dation, found it in his heart to paint the purple dawn of virgin
womanhood in the far awav south, and made a Moor to burn
with more than Afric's passion. That's the mind that I will
follow, not only because he is genial, warm, and real, not only
because he is substantial, hath avoirdupois, a perfume, and a
taste, but because he is multiform, elastic, not procrustean, not
monomaniacal. I hate thy straight lines, and thy arrangements
for the elbows, and thy lid that fits over all, with the screws
ready in thy hand. I will none of it. If thou insist, fun shall
come of it, but it shall be of that fun which all men make who
forget that it takes two to conclude a bargain.

102 Social Theories.

The measure which thou hast scientifically taken of me is
my measure now, perhaps ! but now I am young, dormant, not
come to my full height or my adult strength. I feel that I
am destined to outgrow thy feet and inches hereafter ; whole
degrees of latitude shall I require for my morning walk — what
do I say ? I will spurn the great globe itself, and the solar
system shall hold me in base " circumscription and confine."
The utmost measure of thy extended arms, my brother, is thy
own measure, not mine, still less that of collective manhood. If
thou be truly great, then shalt thou add one grain of sand to
the ant-hill, and that shall suffice thee, as it hath sufficed thy
brother insect however great, until now !

Remember how Mahomet learned that he was sent of God,
even by making two or three dunderheads take him at that
rate. This is the mountain that the fate of all prophets must
begin by removing. Ever so little a spark of this, even as a
grain of mustard seed, will answer for a beginning, and then
comes by degrees a flame that covers a large portion of Asia,
Africa, and Europe, with turbans, circumcision, and slaughter.

I object to these transcendental theories of life, because of
their genesis. I object to them, because of the experience of
them that hath been made. I object to them, more than all,
because they threaten to pare down and clip the tendrils by
which I cling to the concrete.

They are, one and all, the offspring of negative propositions,
and are imaginary eliminations of existing evils, and what
men regard as such. Fourier's disgust at French corruption,

Social Theories. 103

passion, and discord, was a good motive for his going to Eng-
land, or Switzerland, or America. He might have found his
quietus in the concrete. This disgust was no generative power
to create a new civilization, because generation is not effected
through disgust, never was, and never will be. It is the
crystallization of love and worship in the average mind that
foundeth new systems, dissatisfaction operates with the torch,
the mine, and the guillotine, it ploughs, harrows and prepares
the ground, love seeds it. Love, and Hope, and Faith.

Dost thou speak to me of the large promise of these people,
of quiet, and joy, and universal satisfaction, and offer this as a
proof of love ? I cannot accept it as such. They offer it to
man on the condition of his beins: no more what he hath ever
been — a belligerent. They ask him to lay down his fangs and
claws, and taking him into the high mountain of their theory,
promise him the kingdom of the world. Retro Satanas !

I shall not enter into any contract to wash my Ethiopian
. skin or eradicate my leopard's spots. I shall seek to be clean
and to make my neighbor clean, but if he will not be clean,
" let him be filthy still."

The experience that hath been made of ultra doctrines does
not charm my mind. I like not to contemplate the rites of
Buddha, or the Thebaid, or the monomania of La Trappe.
Even Quakerism leaves a burning spot of my heart unwatered ;
this, thou of the Society of Friends, this thou sayest is a proof
of my corrupt nature. Let us pray !
« We are all convinced of our own unworthiness, monsters of

104 Social Theories.

guilt are we, but yet have we a clear perception of tlie right,
we think. Did God, then, make our conscience, and the devil
make our wills ? If so, we are held by a double ownership,
and must abide the consequence.

We are conscious that there is an up and a down in space,
but if we analyse this idea we shall find that " down" is but
another name for that which is in the direction of gravitation ;
" up," that which is against gravitation. To the Infinite Mind
in infinite space can there be neither up nor down, I think.
In the moral world self is the centre of gravitation, what tends
uniquely thither we call selfish — down ; what tends against
that — generous — up. Now the highest flight of eagle vitality
must tire, for the gravitation is perennial, the vitality limited,
brief, feeble. We build our church up into the sky against the
gravitation, but 'tis only the downward tendency that holds it
fast. This is true materially, and it is true morally, for there
are not two Gods, but one God, I believe ! Therefore do civili-
zations begin with heroism, self-sacrifice, and love ! These, like
the fusee of the rocket, conquer the suction of earth, and the
stick soars. The fusee lessens by combustion, the stick remains
ever of the original avoirdupois. The stick goes up with so
many ounces of unwillingness, and by degrees there comes a
balance of power — momentary ; for the downward will gets the
better of the fire, and the stick comes home. The first Chris-
tians were crucified with their heads downwards ; the later
Christians hold largely in the funds, and seek Rothschild's
countenance. This suction self-ward is so inherent and inevi-

Social T ii e o k i e s . 105

table, that the sacrifice of self hath ever, until now, been bought
— for a consideration — which, to my mind, seems not unlike
going in at the same hole at which we came out — sailing
westward until we find ourselves in the orient.

For these reasons do I mistrust the theorist. Nine times in
ten hath he no wholesome, working, organic relation with
God's around or with his fellow-men. Nine times in ten is his
position in life exceptional and not normal. Nine times in ten
doth he sit perched upon an income which is a dead branch of
the living tree of industry, and with his belly distended by the
east wind, and his heart sour with the ambition that hath struck
inward, doth he spout generalities more or less outside of the
real needs of to-day. He hath said in his heart, that God's
world, till now, hath been but rough draft on slate, and saith
that he hath a sponge. Not so, brother! This is a fight;
come down, and take thy side, and do battle for the most right
of the two combatants. Thy "virtue" is an elevation on
paper ; to build it on the ground, we must have " cakes
and ale."

Lock up thy head, which would fain teach us that one man
is more than all men ; open thy heart, where there be treasures
yet untold ; let thy hand do with its might whatever it findeth
to do, not because of perfection, which is out of reach, but
because idleness is the root of much evil.

When, in the plenitude of thy ingenuity, thou canst fashion
a stick with only one end, a solid body with only one side, a

G

1 OG Social Theories.

magnet with only one pole, a light not dogged by sha-
dow, a harmony with only one part, a marriage with only
a bridegroom, then wilt thou be prepared to begin thy
Millennium.

AMERICAN ART.

The susceptibility, the tastes, and the genius which enable a
people to enjoy the Fine Arts, and to excel in them, have been
denied to the Anglo- Americans, not only by European talkers,
but by European thinkers. The assertion of our obtuseness and
inefficiency in this respect, has been ignorantly and presumptu-
ously set forth by some persons, merely to fill up the measure
of our condemnation. Others have arrived at the same con-
clusion, after examining our political and social character, after
investigating our exploits, and testing our capacities. They
admit that we trade with enterprise and skill ; that we build
ships cunningly, and sail them well ; that we have a quick and
far-sighted apprehension of the value of a territory ; that we
make wholesome homespun laws for its government, and that
we fight hard when molested in any of these homely exercises
of our ability ; but they assert that there is a stubborn, anti-
poetical tendency in all that we do, or say, or think; they
attribute our very excellence, in the ordinary business of life, to
causes which must prevent our development as artists.

Enjoying the accumulated result of the thought and labor of
centuries, Europe has witnessed our struggles with the hard-

108 American Art.

ships of an untamed continent, and the disadvantages of colo-
nial relations, with but a partial appreciation of what we aim
at, with but an imperfect knowledge of what we have done.
Seeing us intently occupied, during several generations, in felling
forests, in building towns, and constructing roads, she thence
formed a theory that we are good for nothing except these pio-
neer efforts. She taunted us, because there were no statues or
frescoes in our log-cabins ; she pronounced us unmusical,
because we did not sit dow r n in the swamp, with an Indian on
one side and a rattlesnake on the other, to play the violin.
That she should triumph over the deficiencies of a people who
had set the example of revolt and republicanism, was natural ;
but the reason which she assigned for those deficiencies was not
the true reason. She argued with the depth and the sagacity
of a philosopher who should conclude, from seeing an infant
imbibe with eagerness its first aliment, that its whole life would
be occupied in similar absorption.

Sir Walter Scott, rank tory as he was, showed more good
sense, when, in recommending an American book to Miss Edge-
worth, he accounted for such a phenomenon, by saying, " that
people once possessed of a three-legged stool, soon contrive to
make an easy-chair." Humble as the phrase is, we here per-
ceive an expectation on his part, that the energies now exer-
cised in laying the foundations of a mighty empire, would, in
due time, rear the stately columns of civilization, and crown the
edifice with the entablature of letters and of arts. Kemember-
ing that one leg of the American stool was planted in Maine, a

American Art. 109

second in Florida, and the third at the base of the Rocky
Mountains, he could scarce expect that the chair would become
an easy one in a half-century.

It is true, that before the Declaration of Independence,
Copley had in Boston formed a style of portrait which filled Sir
Joshua Reynolds with astonishment ; and that West, breaking
through the bar of Quaker prohibition, and conquering the pre-
judice against a provincial aspirant, had taken a high rank in
the highest walk of art in London. Stuart, Trumbull, Allston,
Morse, Leslie, and Newton, followed in quick succession, while
Vanderlyn won golden opinions at Rome, and bore away high
honors at Paris. So far were the citizens of the Republic from
showing a want of capacity for art, that we may safely affirm
the bent of their genius was rather peculiarly in that direc-
tion, since the first burins of Europe were employed in the ser-
vice of the American pencil, before Irving had written, and
while Cooper was yet a child. That England, with these facts
before her, should have accused us of obtuseness in regard to
art, and that we should have pleaded guilty to the charge, fur-
nishes the strongest proof of her disposition to underrate our
intellectual powers, and of our own ultra docility and want of
self-reliance.

Not many years since, one of the illustrious and good men
of America exclaimed, in addressing the nation :

"Excudent alii mollius spirantia tera,
Credo ecruidern ; vivos ducent de niarmore vultusl"

110 American Art.

Since that period, art has received a new impulse among us.
Artists have arisen in numbers ; the public gives its attention
to their productions ; their labors are liberally rewarded. It
seems now admitted that wealth and cultivation are destined to
yield, in America, the same fruits that they have given in Italy,
in Spain, in France, Germany, and England. It seems now
admitted that there is no anomalous defect in our mental
endowments ; that the same powers displayed in clearing the
forest, and tilling the farm, will trim the garden. It seems clear
that we are destined to have a school of art. It becomes a
matter of importance to decide how the youth who devote
themselves to these studies are to acquire the rudiments of imi-
tation, and what influences are to be made to act upon them.
This question seemed, at one time, to have been decided. The
friends of art in America looked to Europe for an example ; and
with the natural assumption that experience had made the old
world wise, in what relates to the fine arts, determined upon
forming Academies, as the more refined nations of the continent
have ended by doing. We might as well have proposed a
national church establishment. That the youth must be taught
is clear — but in framing an institution for that object, if we look
to countries grown old in European systems, it must be for
warning rather than for example. We speak from long experi-
ence and much observation of European Academies. We enter-
tain the highest respect for the professional ability and for the
personal character of the gentlemen who preside over those
institutions. Nay, it is our conviction of their capacity and of

American Art. Ill

their individual willingness to impart knowledge, which forces
upon us the opinion of the rottenness of the systems of which
they are the instruments.

De Tocqueville remarks upon the British aristocracy, that,
notwithstanding their sagacity as a body, and their integrity
and high-toned character as individuals, they have gradually
absorbed everything, and left the people nothing; while he
declares the American employes, though they are sometimes
defaulters and dishonest, yet, after all, get little beyond their
dues, and are obliged to sacrifice both reputation and self-
respect in order to obtain that little. Those who direct the
Academies of Fine Arts in Europe, are prone to take an advan-
tage of their position analogous to that enjoyed by the afore-
said aristocracy. As the latter come to regard the mass as a
flock to be fed, and defended, and cherished, for the sake of
their wool and mutton, so the former are not slow to make a
band of educandi the basis of a hierarchy. Systems and
manner soon usurp the place of sound precept. Faith is
insisted on rather than works. The pupils are required to be
not only docile but submissive. They are not free.

To minds once opened to the light of knowledge, an adept
may speak in masses, and the seed will fall on good ground ;
bnt to awaken a dormant soul, to impart first principles, to
watch the budding of the germ of rare talent, requires a contact
and relations such as no professor can have with a class, such
as few men can have with any boy. If Europe must furnish a
model of artistical tuition, let us go at once to the records of

112 American Art.

the great age of art in Italy, and we shall there learn that
Michael Angelo and Raphael, and their teachers also, were
formed without any of the cumbrous machinery and mill-horse
discipline of a modern Academy. They were instructed, it is
true ; they were apprenticed to painters. Instead of passively
listening to an experienced proficient merely, they discussed
with their fellow students the merits of different works, the
advantages of rival methods, the choice between contradictory
authorities. They formed one another. Sympathy warmed
them, opposition strengthened, and emulation spurred them on.
In these latter days, classes of boys toil through the rudiments
under the eye of men who are themselves aspirants for the
public favor, and who, deriving no benefit, as masters from
their apprentices, from the proficiency of the lads, look upon
every clever graduate as a stumbling-block in their own way.
Hence their system of stupefying discipline, their tying down
the pupil to mere manual execution, their silence in regard to
principles, their cold reception of all attempts to invent. To
chill in others the effort to acquire, is in them the instinctive
action of a wish to retain. Well do we remember the expres-
sion of face and the tone of voice with which one of these
bashaws of an European Academy once received our praise of
the labors of a man grown grey in the practice of his art, but
who, though his works were known and admired at Naples and
St. Petersburg!], at London and Vienna, had not yet won from
the powers that were his exequatur — " Yes, sir, yes ! clever
boy, sir ! promises well /"

American Art. 113

The president and the professors of an Academy are regarded
by the public as, of course, at the head of their respective pro-
fessions. Their works are models, their opinions give the law.
The youth are awed and dazzled by their titles and their fame ;
the man of genius finds them arrayed in solid phalanx to com-
bat his claim. In those countries where a court bestows all
encouragement, it is found easy to keep from those in power
all knowledge of a dangerous upstart talent. How far this
mischievous influence can be carried, may be gathered from the
position in which Sir Joshua Reynolds and his court managed
to keep men like Wilson and Gainsborough. He who sees the
productions of these men in company with those of their con-
temporaries, and who remembers the impression which Sir
Joshua's writings had conveyed of their standing as artists, will
perceive with surprise that they were not the victims of any
overt act of misrepresentation, but that they were quietly and
gently praised out of the rank due to them into an inferior one,
by a union of real talent, constituted influence, and a sly, cool,
consistent management.

Many of the ablest painters and sculptors of Europe have
expressed to us, directly and frankly, the opinion that Academies,
furnished though they be with all the means to form the eye,
the hand, and the mind of the pupil, are positively hindrances
instead of helps to art.

The great element of execution, whether in painting or in

sculpture, is imitation. This is the language of art. Almost

all clever boys can learn this to a degree far beyond what is

6*

114 American Art.

supposed. That objects should be placed before tliern calculated
to attract their attention, and teach them the rules of propor-
tion, while they educate the eye to form and color, no one will
dispute; but the insisting upon a routine, the depriving them
of all choice or volition, the giving a false preference to readi-
ness of hand over power of thought, all these are great evils,
and we fully believe that they fall with a withering force on
those minds especially whose nourishment and guidance they
were intended to secure — we mean on those minds which are
filled with a strong yearning after excellence, warm sympa-
thies, quick, delicate, and nice perceptions, strong will, and a
j3roud consciousness of creative power of mind, joined to diffi-
dence of their capacity to bring into action the energies they
feel within them. The paltry prizes offered for the best per-
formances seldom rouse men of this order ; they may create in
such souls an unamiable contempt for their unsuccessful com-
petitors ; they may give to successful mediocrity, inflated hopes,
and a false estimate of its own powers. As a substantial help
they are worthless even to the tyro who wins them.

Leonardo da Vinci coiled a rope in his studio, and drew from
it, with the subtlest outline, and the most elaborate study of
light and shade. " Behold !" said he, " my academy !" He
meant to show that the elements of art can be learned without
the pompous array of the antique school, or the lectures of the
professor. Few will be tempted to follow his example; but
even that were far better than a routine of instruction which,
after years of drudgery and labor, sends forth the genius and

American Art. 115

the blockhead so nearly on a level with each other, the one
manacled with precepts, the other armed with them at all
points.

The above reflections have been drawn from us by the oft-
repeated expression of regret which we have listened to, " that
from the constitution of our society, and the nature of our
institutions, no influences can be brought to bear upon art with
the vivifying power of court patronage." We fully and firmly
believe that these institutions are more favorable to a natural,
healthful growth of art than any hot-bed culture whatever.
We cannot — (as did Napoleon) — make, by a few imperial
edicts, an army of battle painters, a hierarchy of drum-arid-fife
glorifiers. Nor can we, in the life-time of an individual, so
stimulate this branch of culture, so unduly and disproportion-
ately endow it, as to make a Walhalla start from a republican
soil. The monuments, the pictures, the statues of the republic
will represent what the people love and wish for, — not what
they can be made to accept, not how much taxation they will
bear. We hope, by such slow growth, to avoid the reaction
resulting from a morbid development; a reaction like that
which attended the building of St. Peter's ; a reaction like that
consequent upon the outlay which gave birth to the royal
mushroom at Versailles ; a reaction like that which we antici-
pate in Bavaria, unless the people of that country are consti-
tuted differently from the rest of mankind.

If there be any youth toiling through the rudiments of art,
at the forms of the simple and efficient school at New York

116 American Art.

(whose title is the only pompons thing about it), with a chilling
belief that, elsewhere, the difficulties he struggles with are
removed or modified, we call upon him to be of good cheer,
and to believe — what from our hearts we are convinced of —
that there is at present no country where the development and
growth of an artist is more free, healthful, and happy than it is
in these United States. It is not until the tyro becomes a pro-
ficient — nay, an adept — that his fortitude and his temper are
put to tests more severe than elsewhere — tests of which we pro-
pose to speak more at large on a future occasion.

AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.

We have heard the learned in matters relating to art, ex-
press the opinion that these United States are destined to form
a new style of architecture. Remembering that a vast popu-
lation, rich in material and guided by the experience, the pre-
cepts, and the models of the old world, was about to erect
durable structures for every function of civilized life, we also
cherished the hope that such a combination would speedily be
formed.

We forgot that though the country was young, yet the
people were old, that as Americans we have no childhood, no
half-fabulous, legendary wealth, no misty, cloud-enveloped
back-ground. We forgot that we had not unity of religious
belief, nor unity of origin ; that our territory, extending from
the white bear to the alligator, made our occupations dissimi-
lar, our character and tastes various. We forgot that the Re-
public had leaped full-grown and armed to the teeth from the
brain of her parent, and that a hammer had been the instru-
ment of delivery. We forgot that reason had been the dry
nurse of the giant offspring, and had fed her from the begin-
ning with the strong bread and meat of fact ; that every wry

118 American Architecture.

face the bantling ever made had been daguerreotyped, and all
her words and deeds printed and labelled away in the pigeon-
holes of official bureaux.

Reason can dissect, but cannot originate ; she can adopt,
but cannot create ; she can modify, but cannot find. Give her
but a cock-boat, and she will elaborate a line-of-battle ship ;
give her but a beam, with its wooden tooth, and she turns
out the patent plough. She is not young ; and when her friends
insist upon the phenomena of youth, then is she least attractive.
She can imitate the flush of the young cheek, but where is the
flash of the young eye ? She buys the teeth — alas ! she
cannot buy the breath of childhood. The puny cathedral
of Broadway, like an elephant dwindled to the size of a dog,
measures her yearning for Gothic sublimity, while the roar of
the Astor-house, and the mammoth vase of the great reservoir,
show how she works when she feels at home, and is in earnest.

The mind of this country has never been seriously applied
to the subject of building. Intently engaged in matters of
more pressing importance, we have been content to receive
our notions of architecture as we have received the fashion of
our garments, and the form of our entertainments, from
Europe. In our eagerness to appropriate, we have neglected
to adapt, to distinguish, — nay, to understand. We have
built small Gothic temples of wood, and have omitted all
ornaments for economy, unmindful that size, material, and
ornament are the elements of effect in that style of building.
Captivated by the classic symmetry of the Athenian models

American Architecture. 119

we have sought to bring the Parthenon into our streets, to
make the temple of Theseus work in our towns. We have
shorn them of their lateral colonnades, let them down from
their dignified platform, pierced their walls for light, and, in-
stead of the storied relief and the eloquent statue which
enriched the frieze, and graced the pediment, we have made
our chimney tops to peer over the broken profile, and tell, by
their rising smoke, of the traffic and desecration of the in-
terior. Still the model may be recognised, some of the
architectural features are entire ; like the captive king, stripped
alike of arms and purple, and drudging amid the Helots of a
capital, the Greek temple, as seen among us, claims pity for
its degraded majesty, and attests the barbarian force which
has abused its nature, and been blind to its qualities.

If we trace Architecture from its perfection, in the days of
Pericles, to its manifest decay in the reign of Constantine, we
shall find that one of the surest symptoms of decline was the
adoption of admired forms and models for purposes not con-
templated in their invention. The forum became a temple ;
the tribunal became a temple ; the theatre was turned into a
church ; nay, the column, that organized member, that sub-
ordinate part, set up for itself, usurped unity, and was a
monument ! The great principles of Architecture being once
abandoned, correctness gave way to novelty, economy and
vain-glory associated produced meanness and pretension.
Sculpture, too, had waned. The degenerate workmen could
no longer match the fragments they sought to mingle, nor

120 American Architecture.

copy the originals they only hoped to repeat. The mouldering
remains of better days frowned contempt upon such impotent
efforts, till, in the gradual coming of darkness, ignorance be-
came contempt, and insensibility ceased to compare.

We say that the mind of this country has never been
seriously applied to architecture. True it is, that the com-
monwealth, with that desire of public magnificence which has
ever been a leading feature of democracy, has called from the
vasty deep of the past the spirits of the Greek, the Roman,
and the Gothic styles ; but they would not come when she
did call to them ! The vast cathedral, with its ever open por-
tals, towering high above the courts of kings, inviting all men
to its cool and fragrant twilight, where the voice of the organ
stirs the blood, and the dim-seen visions of saints and martyrs
bleed and die upon the canvas amid the echoes of hymning
voices and the clouds of frankincense, this architectural embo-
dying of the divine and blessed words, " Come to me, ye who
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest !" demands
a sacrifice of what we hold dearest. Its corner-stone must be
laid upon the right, to judge the claims of the church. The
style of Greek architecture, as seen in the Greek temple,
demands the aid of sculpture, insists upon every feature of its
original organization, loses its harmony if a note be dropped in
the execution, and when so modified as to serve for a custom-
house or a bank, departs from its original beauty and propriety
as widely as the crippled gelding of a hackney coach differs
from the bounding and neighing wild horse of the desert.

American Architecture. 121

Even where, in the fervor of our faith in shapes, we have
sternly adhered to the dictum of another age, and have actu-
ally succeeded in securing the entire exterior which echoes the
forms of Athens, the pile stands a stranger among us, and
receives a respect akin to what we should feel for a fellow-citi-
zen in the garb of Greece. It is a make-believe. It is not the
real thing. We see the marble capitals ; we trace the acanthus
leaves of a celebrated model — incredulous; it is not a temple.
The number and variety of our experiments in building show
the dissatisfaction of the public taste with what has been
hitherto achieved ; the expense at which they have been made
proves how strong is the } r earning after excellence ; the talents
and acquirements of the artists whose services have been
engaged in them are such as to convince us that the fault lies
in the system, not in the men. Is it possible that out of this
chaos order can arise,? — that of these conflicting dialects and
jargons a language can be born ? When shall we have done
with experiments ? What refuge is there from the absurdities
that have successively usurped the name and functions of archi-
tecture ? Is it not better to go on with consistency and uni-
formity, in imitation of an admired model, than incur the dis-
grace of other failures ? In answering these questions let us
remember with humility that all salutary changes are the work
of many and of time; but let us encourage experiment at
the risk of license, rather than submit to an iron rule that
begins by sacrificing reason, dignity, and comfort. Let us con-
sult nature, and, in the assurance that she will disclose a mine,

122 American Architecture.

richer than was ever dreamed of by the Greeks, in art as well
as in philosophy. Let us regard as ingratitude to the author
of nature the despondent idleness that sits down while one want
is unprovided for, one worthy object unattained.

If, as the first step in our search after the great principles of
construction, we but observe the skeletons and skins of animals,
through all the varieties of beast and bird, of fish and insect, arc
we not as forcibly struck hj their variety as by their beauty ?
There is no arbitrary law of proportion, no unbending model of
form. There is scarce a part of the animal organization which
we do not find elongated or shortened, increased, diminished,
or suppressed, as the wants of the genus or species dictate, as
their exposure or their work may require. The neck of the
swan and that of the eagle, however different in character and
proportion, equally charm the eye and satisfy the reason. We
approve the length of the same member in grazing animals, its
shortness in beasts of prey. The horse's shanks are thin, and
we admire them ; the greyhound's chest is deep, and we cry,
beautiful ! It is neither the presence nor the absence of this or
that part, or shape, or color, that wins our eye in natural
objects ; it is the consistency and harmony of the parts juxta-
posed, the subordination of details to masses, and of masses to
the whole.

The law of adaptation is the fundamental law of nature in
all structure. So unflinchingly does she modify a type in
accordance with a new position, that some philosophers have
declared a variety of appearance to be the object aimed at; so

American Architecture. 123

entirely does she limit the modification to the demands of
necessity, that adherence to one original plan seems, to limited
intelligence, to be carried to the very verge of caprice. The
domination of arbitrary rules of taste has produced the very
counterpart of the wisdom thus displayed in every object
around us ; we tie up the cameleopard to the rack ; we shave
the lion, and call him a dog ; we strive to bind the unicorn
with his band in the furrow, and to make him harrow the val-
leys after us !

When the savage of the South Sea islands shapes his war
club, his first thought is of its use. His first efforts pare the
long shaft, and mould the convenient handle ; then the heavier
end takes gradually the edge that cuts, while it retains the
weight that stuns. His idler hour divides its surface by lines
and curves, or embosses it with figures that have pleased his
eye, or are linked with his superstition. We admire its effect-
ive shape, its Etruscan-like quaintness, its graceful form and
subtle outline, yet we neglect the lesson it might teach. If we
compare the form of a newly invented machine with the per-
fected type of the same instrument, we observe, as we trace it
through the phases of improvement, how weight is shaken off
where strength is less needed, how functions are made to
approach without impeding each other, how the straight
becomes curved, and the curve is straightened, till the strag-
gling and cumbersome machine becomes the compact, effective,
and beautiful engine.

So instinctive is the perception of organic beauty in the

124 American Architecture.

human eye, that we cannot withhold our admiration even from
the organs of destruction. There is majesty in the royal paw
of the lion, music in the motion of the brindled tiger ; we accord
our praise to the sword and the dagger, and shudder our appro-
val of the frightful aptitude of the ghastly guillotine.

Conceiving destruction to be a normal element of the system
of nature equally with production, we have used the word
beauty in connexion with it. We have no objection to ex-
change it for the word character, as indicating the mere adapt-
ation of forms to functions, and would gladly substitute the
actual pretensions of our architecture to the former, could we
hope to secure the latter.

Let us now turn to a structure of our own, one which, from
its nature and uses, commands us to reject authority, and we
shall find the result of the manly use of plain good sense, so
like that of taste and genius too, as scarce to require a distinct-
ive title. Observe a ship at sea ! Mark the majestic form of
her hull as she rushes through the water, observe the graceful
bend of her body, the gentle transition from round to flat, the
grasp of her keel, the leap of her bows, the symmetry and rich
tracery of her spars and rigging, and those grand wind mus-
cles, her sails. Behold an organization second only to that of
an animal, obedient as the horse, swift as the stag, and bearing
the burden of a thousand camels from pole to pole ! What
Academy of Design, what research of connoisseurship, what
imitation of the Greeks produced this marvel of construction ?
Here is the result of the study of man upon the great deep,

American Architecture. 125

where Nature spake of the laws of building, not in the feather
and in the flower, but in winds and waves, and he bent all his
mind to hear and to obey. Could we carry into our civil
architecture the responsibilities that weigh upon our ship-build-
ing, we should ere long have edifices as superior to the Parthe-
non, for the purposes that we require, as the Constitution or the
Pennsylvania is to the galley of the Argonauts. Could our
blunders on terra firma be put to the same dread test that those
of shipbuilders are, little would be now left to say on this
subject.

Instead of forcing the functions of every sort of building into
one general form, adopting an outward shape for the sake of
the eye or of association, without reference to the inner distri-
bution, let us begin from the heart as a nucleus, and work out-
wards. The most convenient size and arrangement of the rooms
that are to constitute the building being fixed, the access of the
light that may, of the air that must be wanted, being provided
for, we have the skeleton of our building. Nay, we have all
excepting the dress. The connexion and order of parts, juxta-
posed for convenience, cannot fail to speak of their relation and
uses. As a group of idlers on the quay, if they grasp a rope to
haul a vessel to the pier, are united in harmonious action by the
cord they seize, as the slowly yielding mass forms a thorough-
bass to their livelier movement, so the unflinching adaptation
of a building to its position and use gives, as a sure product of
that adaptation, character and expression.

What a field of study would be opened by the adoption in

120 American Architecture.

civil architecture of those laws of apportionment, distribution,
and connexion, which we have thus hinted at? No longer
could the mere tyro huddle together a crowd of ill-arranged,
ill-lighted, and stifled rooms, and masking the chaos with the
sneaking copy of a Greek facade, usurp the name of architect.
If this anatomic connexion and proportion has been attained in
ships, in machines, and, in spite of false principles, in such
buildings as make a departure from it fatal, as in bridges and
in scaffolding, why should we fear its immediate use in all con-
struction ? As its first result, the bank w r ould have the physi-
ognomy of a bank, the church would be recognised as such,
nor would the billiard-room and the chapel wear the same uni-
form of columns and pediment. The African king, standing in
mock majesty with his legs and feet bare, and his body clothed
in a cast coat of the Prince Regent, is an object whose ridicu-
lous effect defies all power of face. Is not the Greek temple
jammed in between the brick shops of Wall street or Cornhill,
covered with lettered signs, and occupied by groups of money-
changers and apple women, a parallel even for his African
majesty ?

We have before us a letter in which Mr. Jefferson recom-
mends the model of the Maison Carree for the State House at
Richmond. Was he aware that the Maison Carree is but a
fragment, and that too, of a Roman temple ? He was ; it is
beautiful — is the answ r er. An English society erected in Hyde
Park a cast in bronze of the colossal Achilles of the Quirinal,
and, changing the head, transformed it into a monument to

American Architecture. 12*7

Wellington. But where is the distinction between the personal
prowess, the invulnerable body, the heaven-shielded safety of
the hero of the Iliad, and the complex of qualities which makes
the modern general ? The statue is beautiful, — is the answer.
If such reasoning is to hold, why not translate one of Pindar's
odes in memory of Washington, or set up in Carolina a colossal
Osiris in honor of General Greene ?

The monuments of Egypt and of Greece are sublime as
expressions of their power and their feeling. The modern
nation that appropriates them displays only wealth in so doing.
The possession of means, not accompanied by the sense of pro-
priety or feeling for the true, can do no more for a nation than
it can do for an individual. The want of an illustrious ancestry
may be compensated, fully compensated ; but the purloining of
the coat-of-arms of a defunct family is intolerable. That such
a monument as we have described should have been erected in
London while Chantry flourished, when Flaxman's fame was
cherished by the few, and Bailey aud Behnes were already
known, is an instructive fact. That the illustrator of the Greek
poets, and of the Lord's Prayer, should, in the meanwhile, have
been preparing designs for George the Fourth's silversmiths, is
not less so.

The edifices, in whose construction the principles of architec-
ture are developed, may be classed as organic, formed to meet
the wants of their occupants, or monumental, addressed to the
sympathies, the faith, or the taste of a people. These two
great classes of buildings, embracing almost every variety of

12S American Architecture.

structure, though occasionally joined and mixed in the same
edifice, have their separate rules, as they have a distinct
abstract nature. In the former class, the laws of structure
and apportionment, depending on definite wants, obey a
demonstrable rule. They may be called machines, each indi-
vidual of which must be formed with reference to the abstract
type of its species. The individuals of the latter class, bound
by no other laws than those of the sentiment which inspires
them, and the sympathies to which they are addressed, occupy
the positions and assume the forms best calculated to render
their parent feeling. No limits can be put to their variety ;
their size and richness have always been proportioned to the
means of the people who have erected them.

If, from what has been thus far said, % it shall have appeared
that we regard the Greek masters as aught less than the true
apostles of correct taste in building, we have been misunder-
stood. We believe firmly and fully that they can teach us ;
but let us learn principles, not copy shapes ; let us imitate
them like men, and not ape them like monkeys. Remember-
ing what a school of art it was that perfected their system of
ornament, let us rather adhere to that system in enriching
what we invent than substitute novelty for propriety. After
observing the innovations of the ancient Romans, and of the
modern Italian masters in this department, we cannot but
recur to the Horatian precept —

" exeroplaria Grrcca
Xocturna versate mami, .versate diurna !"

American Architecture. 129

To conclude : The fundamental laws of building, found at
the basis of every style of architecture, must be the basis of
ours. The adaptation of the forms and magnitude of structures
to the climate they are exposed to, and the offices for which
they are intended, teaches us to study our own varied wants
in these respects. The harmony of their ornaments with the
nature that they embellished, and the institutions from which
they sprang, calls on us to do the like justice to our country,
our government, and our faith. As a Christian preacher may
give weight to truth, and add persuasion to proof, by studying
the models of pagan writers, so the American builder, by a
truly philosophic investigation of ancient art, will learn of the
Greeks to be American.

The system of building we have hinted at cannot be formed
in a day. It requires all the science of any country to ascer-
tain and fix the proportions and arrangements of the members
of a great building, to plant it safely on the soil, to defend it
from the elements, to add the grace and poetry of ornament to
its frame. Each of these requisites to a good building requires
a special study and a life-time. Whether we are destined soon
to see so noble a fruit, may be doubted ; but we can, at least,
break the ground and throw in the seed.

We are fully aware that many regard all matters of taste
as matters of pure caprice and fashion. We are aware that
many think our architecture already perfect; but we have
chosen, during this sultry weather, to exercise a truly Ameri-
can right — the right of talking. This privilege, thank God,

130 American Architecture.

is unquestioned, — from Miller, who, robbing Beranger, trans-
lates into fanatical prose, " Finissons en ! le monde est assez
vieux !" to Brisbane, who declares that the same world has yet
to begin, and waits a subscription of two hundred thousand
dollars in order to start. Each man is free to present his
notions on any subject. We have also talked, firm in the
belief that the development of a nation's taste in art depends
on a thousand deep-seated influences, beyond the ken of the
ignorant present ; firm in the belief that freedom and know-
ledge will bear the fruit of refinement and beauty, we have
yet dared to utter a few words of discontent, a few crude
thoughts of what might be, and we feel the better for it.
We promised ourselves nothing more than that satisfaction
which Major Downing attributes to every man " who has had
his say, and then cleared out," and we already have a pleasant
consciousness of what he meant by it.

RELATIVE AND INDEPENDENT BEAUTY.

There are threads of relation which lead me from my specialty
to the specialties of other men. Following this commune quod-
dam vinculum, I lay my artistic dogma at the feet of science ;
I test it by the traditional lore of handicraft ; I seek a confir-
mation of these my inductions, or a contradiction and refuta-
tion of them ; I utter these inductions as they occur to myself;
I illustrate them by what they spontaneously suggest ; I let
them lead me as a child*.

Persons whose light I have sought, have been worried and
fretted at the form, the body of my utterance. Since this soul,
if soul it be, took the form of this body, I have received it as it
came. If I seek another form, another dress than that with
which my thought was born, shall I not disjoin that which is
one ? Shall I not disguise what I seek to decorate ? I have
seen that there is in the body and the dress an indication of
the quantum and quality of the mind, and therefore doth it
seem honest that I seek no other dress than mine own. I also
know by heart some lines and proportions of the work of able
penmen. The lucidus ordo of another mind is not displayed

132 Relative and

before me as pearls before swine. I love to bear in my bosom
a nosegay plucked in classic ground : it sweetens me to myself.
I respect too much the glory of Schiller and Winkelman, of
Goethe and Hegel, to dare purloin their vesture for my crudi-
ties. The partial development of my mind makes the dress
and garb of imperfection proper for me. My notion of art is
not a somewhat set forth for sale, that I should show it to
advantage, or a soldier in uniform, anxious to pass muster, but
rather a poor babe, whom I strip before the faculty, that they
may council and advise — perad venture bid me despair.

Bodies are so varied by climate, and so changed by work,
that it is rash to condemn them until impotence is demon-
strated. The camelopard was long declared a monster, born
of fancy, a nightmare of traveller's brain ; but when the giraffe
stood browsing in the tree-tops before us, we felt that we had
been hasty. God's law is as far away from our taste as his
ways are beyond our ways. I know full well that, without
dress and ornament, there are places whence one is expelled.
I am too proud to seek admittance in disguise. I had rather
remain in the street, than get in by virtue of a borrowed coat.
That which is partial and fractional may yet be sound and
good as far as it goes.

In the hope that some persons, studious of art, may be curi-
ous to see how I develope the formula I have set up, I proceed.
When I define Beauty as the promise of Function ; Action as
the presence of Function ; Character as the record of Function,
I arbitrarily divide that which is essentially one. I consider

Independent Beauty. 133

the phases through which organized intention passes to com-
pleteness, as if they were distinct entities. Beauty being the
promise of function, must be mainly present before the phase
of action ; but so long as there is yet a promise of function there
is beauty, proportioned to its relation with action or with cha-
racter. There is somewhat of character at the close of the first
epoch of the organic life, as there is somewhat of beauty at the
commencement of the last, but they are less apparent, and
present rather to the reason than to sensuous tests.

If the normal development of organized life be from beauty
to action, from action to character, the progress is a progress
upwards as well as forwards ; and action will be higher than
beauty, even as the summer is higher than the spring ; and
character will be higher than action, even as autumn is the
resume and result of spring and summer. If this be true, the
attempt to prolong the phase of beauty into the epoch of action
can only be made through non-performance ; and false beauty
or embellishment must be the result.

Why is the promise of function made sensuously pleasing ?
Because the inchoate organic life needs a care and protection
beyond its present means of payment. In order that we may
respect instinctive action, which is divine, are our eyes charmed
by the aspect of infancy, and our hearts obedient to the com-
mand of a visible yet impotent volition.

The sensuous charm of promise is so great that the unripe
reason seeks to make life a perennial promise ; but promise, in

134 • Relative and

the phase of action, receives a new name — that of non-
performance, and is visited with contempt.

The dignity of character is so great that the unripe reason
seeks to mark the phase of action with the sensuous livery of
character. The ivy is trained up the green wall, and while the
promise is still fresh on every line of the building, its function
is invaded bv the ambition to seem to have lived.

Not to promise for ever, or to boast at the outset, not to
shine and to seem, but to be and to act, is the glory of any
coordination of parts for an object.

I have spoken of embellishment as false beauty. I will
briefly develope this view of embellishment. Man is an ideal
being; standing, himself inchoate and incomplete, amid the
concrete manifestations of Nature, his first observation recog-
nises defect ; his first action is an effort to complete his being.
Not gifted, as the brutes, with an instinctive sense of complete-
ness, he stands alone as capable of conative action. He studies
himself; he disciplines himself. Now, his best efforts at orga-
nization falling short of the need that is in his heart, and there-
fore infinite, he has sought to compensate for the defect in his
plan by a charm of execution. Tasting sensuously the effect of
a rhythm and harmony in God's world, beyond any adaptation
of means to ends that his reason could measure and approve,
he has sought to perfect his own approximation to the essential
by crowning it with a wreath of measured and musical, yet non-
demonstrable, adjunct. Now, I affirm that, from the ground

Independent Beauty. 135

whereon I stand and whence I think I see him operate, he
thus mirrors, but darkly, God's world. By the sense of incom-
pleteness in his plan, he shows the divine yearning that is in
him ; by the effort to compensate for defect in plan by any
make-shift whatever, he forbids, or at least checks, further
effort. I understand, therefore, by embellishment, the in-
stinctive EFFORT OF INFANT CIVILIZATION TO DISGUISE ITS
INCOMPLETENESS, EVEN AS God's COMPLETENESS IS TO INFANT

science disguised. The many-sided and full and rich har-
mony of nature is a many-sided response to the call for many
functions ; not an sesthetical utterance of the Godhead. In the
tree and in the bird, in the shell and in the insect, we see the
utterance of him who sayeth yea, yea, and nay, nay ; and,
therefore, whatever is assumed as neutral ground, or margin
around the essential, will be found to come of evil, or, in other
words, to be incomplete.

I base my opinion of embellishment upon the hypothesis
that there is not one truth in religion, another in the mathe-
matics, and a third in physics and in art; but that there is one
truth, even as one God, and that organization is his utterance.
Now, organization obeys his law. It obeys his law by an
approximation to the essential, and then there is what we term
life ; or it obeys his law by falling short of the essential, and
then there is disorganization. I have not seen the inorganic
attached to the organized but as a symptom of imperfect plan,
or of impeded function, or of extinct action.

The normal development of beauty is through action to

136 Relative and

completeness. The invariable development of embellishment
and decoration is more embellishment and more decoration.
The reductio ad absurdum is palpable enough at last; but
•where was the first downward step ? I maintain that the first
downward step was the introduction of the first inorganic, non-
functional element, whether of shape or color. If I be told that
such a system as mine would produce nakedness, I accept the
omen. In nakedness I behold the majesty of the essential,
instead of the trappings of pretension. The agendum is not
diminished ; it is infinitely extended. We shall have grasped
with tiny hands the standard of Christ, and borne it into the
academy, when we shall call upon the architect, and sculptor,
and painter to seek to be perfect even as our father is perfect.
The assertion that the human body is other than a fit exponent
and symbol of the human being, is a falsehood, I believe. I
believe it to be false on account of the numerous palpable
falsehoods which have been necessary in order to clinch it.

Beauty is the promise of Function. Solomon, in all his
glory, is, therefore, not arrayed as the lily of the field. Solo-
mon's array is the result of the instinctive effort of incomplete-
ness to pass itself for complete. It is pretension. When
Solomon shall have appreciated nature and himself, he will
reduce his household, and adapt his harness, not for pretension,
but for performance. The lily is arrayed in heavenly beauty,
because it is organized both in shape and color, to dose the
germ of future lilies with atmospheric and solar influence.

We now approach the grand conservative trap, the basis

Independent Beauty. 13V

of independent beauty. Finding in God's world a sensuous
beauty, not organically demonstrated to us, the hierarchies
call on us to shut our eyes, and kneel to an sesthetical utterance
of the divinity. I refuse. Finding here an apparent embel-
lishment, I consider the appearance of embellishment an
accusation of ignorance and incompleteness in my science. I
confirm my refusal after recalling the fact that science has,
thus far, done nothing else than resolve the lovely on the one
hand, the hateful on the other, into utterances of the Godhead
— the former being yea, the latter nay. As the good citizen
obeys the good law because it is good, and the bad law
that its incompleteness be manifest, so does every wrong result
from divine elements, accuse the organization, and by pain
and woe represent X, or the desired solution. To assert that
this or that form or color is beautiful per se, is to formulate
prematurely ; it is to arrogate godship ; and once that false
step is taken, human-godship or tyranny is inevitable without
a change of creed.

The first lispings of science declared that nature abhors a
vacuum ; there we see humanity expressing its ignorance, by
transferring a dark passion to the Godhead which is light and
love. This formula could not outlive experiment, which has
demonstrated that God's care upholds us with so many pounds
to the square inch of pressure on every side, and that the
support is variable.

The ancients knew somewhat of steam. They formulated

steam as a devil. The vessels at Pompeii all speak one language

7*

138 Relative and

— look out for steam ! The moderns have looked into steam,
and, by wrestling with him, have forced him to own himself an
angel — an utterance of love and care.

We are told that we shall know trees by their fruits : even
because of the fruits of refusing to kneel, and of worshipping
with the eyes open, do I proceed to seek that I may find.

Mr. Garbett, in his learned and able treatise on the
principles of Design in Architecture, has dissected the English
house, and found with the light of two words, fallen from Mr.
Emerson, the secret of the inherent ugliness of that structure.
It is the cruelty and selfishness of a London house, he says
(and I think he proves it, too), which affects us so disagree-
ably as we look upon it. Now, these qualities in a house, like
the blear-eyed stolidity of an habitual sot, are symptoms, not
diseases. Mr. Garbett should see herein the marvellous expres-
sion of which bricks and mortar can be made the vehicles.
In vain will he attempt to get by embellishment a denial of
selfishness, so long as selfishness reigns. To medicate s} r mp-
toms, will never, at best, do more than effect a metastasis —
suppress an eruption; let us believe, rather, that the English-
man's love of home has expelled the selfishness from the
boudoir, the kitchen, and the parlor, nobler organs, and
thrown it out on the skin, the exterior, where it less threatens
life, and stands only for X, or a desired solution. If I have
been clear in what I have said, it will be apparent that the
intention, the soul of an organization, will get utterance in the
organization in proportion to the means at its disposal : in

Independent Beauty. 139

vain shall you drill the most supple body of hiin that hates
me, into a manifestation of love for me ; while my blind and
deaf cousin will soon make me feel, and pleasingly feel, that I
was the man in all the world that he wished to meet.

In seeking, through artistic analysis, a confirmation of my
belief in one God, I offend such hierarchies as maintain that
there be two Gods : the one good and all powerful, the other
evil, and somewhat powerful. It is only necessary, in order to
demolish the entire structure I have raised, that some advocate
of independent beauty and believer in the devil — for they go
and come together — demonstrate embellishment for the sake
of beauty in a work of the divine hand, Let me be under-
stood ; I cannot accept as a demonstration of embellishment a
sensuous beauty not yet organically explained. I throw the
onus probandi on him who commands me to kneel. I learned
this trick in Italy, where the disappointed picture-dealer often
defied me, denying his daub to be a Raphael, to say, then,
what it was. No, my friend, I care not whose it is ; when I say
certainly not a Raphael, I merely mean that I will none of it.

If there be in religion any truth, in morals any beauty, in
art any charm, but through fruits, then let them be demon-
strated ; and the demonstration, in regard to morals and faith,
will work backward and enlighten art.

I have diligently sought, with scalpel and pencil, an embel-
lishment for the sake of beauty, a sacrifice of function to other
than destruction. I have not found it, "When I, therefore,

140 Relative and

defy the believer in the devil to show me sueh an embellish-
ment, I do so humbly. I want help.

It seems to me that a word of caution is necessary before
seeking independent beauty. Beauty may be present, yet not
be recognised as such. If we lack the sense of the promise of
function, beauty for us will not exist. The inhabitants of cer-
tain Swiss valleys regard a goitre as ornamental. It is a some-
what superadded to the essential, and they see it under the
charm of association. The courtiers of Louis XIV. admired the
talon rouge, and the enormous perruque. They were somewhat
superadded to the essential, and they saw them under the
charm of association ; but the educated anatomist in Switzer-
land sees the goitre as we see it. The educated artist of Louis
XIV.'s time saw the maiming pretension of his dress as we
see it.

The aim of the artist, therefore, should be first to seek the
essential ; when the essential hath been found, then, if ever, will
be the time to commence embellishment. I will venture to
predict that the essential, when found, will be complete. I will
venture to predict that completeness will instantly throw off all
that is not itself, and will thus command, " Thou shalt have no
other Gods beside me." In a word, completeness is the abso-
lute utterance of the Godhead ; not the completeness of the
Catholic bigot, or of the Quaker, which is a pretended one,
obtained by negation of God-given tendencies ; but the com-
pleteness of the sea, which hath a smile as unspeakable as the

Independent Beauty. 141

darkness of its wrath. ; the completeness of earth, whose every
atom is a microcosm ; the completeness of the human body,
where all relations are resumed at once and dominated. As
the monarch rises out of savage manhood a plumed Czar,
embellishing his short-comings with the sensuous livery of pro-
mise, yet, entering the phase of developed thought and con-
scious vigor, stands the eagle-eyed and grey-coated Bonaparte,
so will every development of real humanity pass through the
phase of non-demonstrable embellishment, which is a false
completeness, to the multiform organization which responds to
every call.

I hold the human body, therefore, to be a multiform com-
mand. Its capacities are the law and gauge of manhood as
connected with earth. T hold the blessings attendant upon
obedience to this command, to be the yea, yea ; the woe con-
sequent upon disobedience, the nay, nay, of the Godhead.
These God daily speaketh to him whose eyes and ears are open.
Other than these I have not heard. When, therefore, the life
of man shall have been made to respond to the command which
is in his being, giving the catholic result of a sound collective
mind in a sound aggregate body, he will organize his human
instrument or art for its human purpose, even as he shall have
adapted his human life to the divine instrument which was
given him. I wish to be clear ; the instrument or body being
of divine origin, we formulate rashly when we forego it, before
thoroughly responding to its requirement. That it is in itself

142 Relative and

no final or complete entity is herein manifest, that it changes.
The significance of yesterday, to-day, and. to-morrow, is this,
that we are in a state of development. Now, the idea of deve-
lopment necessarily supposes incompleteness ; now, complete-
ness can know no change. The instrument of body is no hap-
hazard datum, given as an approximation, whose short-comings
we are to correct by convention, arbitrium, and whim, but an
absolute requirement, and only then responding to the divine
intention when its higher nature shall be unfolded bv hio-h
function, even as the completeness of the brute responds to the
requirement of his lower nature.

Internecine war is the law of brute existence. War ! The
lion lives not by food alone. "Behold, how he pines and dwin-
dles as he growls over his butcher's meat ! It is in the stealthy
march, the ferocious bound, and deadly grapple, tearing palpi-
tating flesh from writhing bone — a halo of red rain around his
head — that he finds the completion of his being, in obedience
to a word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Now, the
law of brute life is the law of human life, in so far as the brute
man is undeveloped in his higher tendencies. They, therefore,
who, having formulated a credo for infant intelligence, and find-
ing domination thereby secured, proceed to organize a 'peren-
nial infancy, that they may enjoy an eternal dominion, will
sooner or later see their sheep transformed to tigers ; for the
law of development being a divine law, can only be withstood
by perishing. If what I have said be true, collective manhood

Independent Beauty. 143

will never allow exceptional development to slumber at the
helm or to abuse the whip. Collective manhood calls for deve-
lopment. If exceptional development answer — Lo ! ye are but
wolves, manhood will reply, — Then, have at you ! lie who
cannot guide, must come down. We feel that we cannot
remain where we are.

I have followed this train of remark whither it led me. Let
us resume. Organization being the passage of intention
through function to completeness, the expressions of its phases
are symptoms only. The same philosophy which has cloaked,
and crippled, and smothered the human body as rebelling
against its Creator, yet always in vain, because the human
body, like the Greek hero, says, Strike ! but learn, that philo-
sophy has set up a theory of beauty by authority, of beauty
independent of other things than its own mysterious harmony
with the human soul. Thus, we remark that the human soul,
so inclined to evil in the moral world, according to the same
philosophy, is sovereign arbiter of beauty in the sesthetical
world. The Creator, who formed man's soul with a thirst for
sin, and his body as a temple of shame, has, therefore, made
his taste infallible! Let us seek through the whole history of
arbitrary embellishment to find a resting-place. We shall look
in vain ; for the introduction of the inorganic into the organized
is destruction ; its development has ever been a reductio ad
absurdum.

There is no conceivable function which does not obey an

144 Relative and

absolute law. The approximation to that law in material, in
parts, in their form, color, and relations, is the measure of free-
dom or obedience to God, in life. The attempt to stamp the
green fruit, the dawning science, the inchoate life, as final, by
such exceptional minds and social achievements as have pro-
duced a wish to remain here, and a call for a tabernacle, these
are attempts to divide manhood, which is one ; they are
attempts to swim away from brute man, sinking in the sea of
fate. They will ever be put to shame ; for the ignorance of
the ignorant confounds the wise ; for the filth of the filthy
befouls the clean ; for the poverty of the poor poisons the quiet
of the possessor. The brute man clings to the higher man ; he
loves him even as himself; he cannot be shaken off; he must
be assimilated and absorbed.

I call, therefore, upon science, in all its branches, to arrest the
tide of sensuous and arbitrary embellishment, so far as it can
do it, not negatively by criticism thereof alone, but positively,
by making the instrument a many-sided response to the multi-
form demands of life. The craving for completeness will then
obtain its normal food in results, not the opiate and deadening
stimulus of decoration. Then will structure and its dependent
sister arts emerge from the stand-still of ipse dixit, and, like the
ship, the team, the steam-engine, proceed through phases of
development towards a response to need.

The truth of such doctrine, if truth be in it, must share the
fate of other truth, and offend him whose creed is identified

Independent Beauty. 145

with the false ; it must meet the indifference of the many who
believe that a new truth is born every week for him who can
afford to advertise. But it must earn a place in the heart of
him who has sought partial truths with success ; for truths are
all related.

THE TRUMBULL GALLERY

In passing through New Haven, a few days since, I visited
the Trumbull gallery, and was sincerely gratified to find the
works of my venerable friend collected, cared for, and in the
keeping of a dignified and permanent corporation.

I remarked with regret that the building, where these works
of Col. Trumbull are kept, was in part of combustible material,
and warmed in a manner which must always be injurious to
pictures. I am not aware of the wants which placed the gallery
on the second story, with a wooden floor and a wooden stair-
case so near the pictures. Whatever ends may have been
gained by this arrangement, much has been sacrificed to them.
Had this gallery been located on a ground floor, in a building
of one story, lighted as at present, with a stone or painted brick
floor resting upon ventilated cobble stones, I must believe that
the expense would have been no greater, and the security
perfect.

I noted a most interesting ojbject in this gallery, a sketch of
Major Andre made by himself on the day of his execution.
This sketch, which is made with a pen, is not of artistic value

The Trumbull Gallery. 147

beyond what may be looked for in similar efforts of any edu-
cated engineer ; but it has a historic and personal interest of a
high order, and I would venture to hint that it is not properly
framed considering its value, nor safely kept, if any one con-
sider its high interest elsewhere. It should form an inseparable
part of some larger fixture. This suggestion would be both
uncalled for and ungracious, but for the fact that much larger
works have in Europe been abstracted from places of public
resort, and that, too, in spite of a jealous supervision of the
authorities interested in their preservation.

It was truly interesting to observe in this collection the small
studies of Col. Trumbull's pictures for the Rotunda; and since
I have mentioned these, I cannot refrain from saying a few
words in relation to the Declaration of Independence, which I
regard as by far the ablest of these pictures, a work selected by
John Randolph as the butt of his unscrupulous sarcasm, stig-
matized by him as the Shin Piece, and almost universally known,
even now, and mentioned by that ludicrous cognomen.

I believe I shall be speaking the sense of the artistical body,
and of cognoscenti in the United States, when I say that the
"Declaration of Independence" has earned the respect of all,
the warm interest of such as watch the development of Ameri-
can Art, and the admiration of those who have tried their own
hand in wielding a weighty and difficult subject.

I admire in this composition the skill with which Trumbull
has collected so many portraits in formal session, without the-
atrical effort, in order to enliven it, and without falling into bald

148 The Trumbull Gallery.

insipidity by adherence to trivial fact. These men are earnest,
yet full of dignity ; they are firm yet cheerful ; they are gentle-
men ; and you see at a glance that they meant something very
serious in pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honors.

The left hand of the figure of Adams is awkwardly pushed
forwards. The left arm of Mr. Jefferson is singularly incorrect
for so careful a draughtsman as Col. Trumbull. One could
wisli that the lower limbs of Hancock had been made more
distinct ; perhaps a slight enlargement and extension of the light
upon his chair, uniting with the mass of light, would have
effected this object. Would not the chair itself, in such case,
be less a spot than it now is in the composition ?

Those who have seen only the sortie of Gibraltar and the
battle of Bunker Hill, would scarcely believe that these larger
works of the Capitol are of the same hand, from their inferiority
in color and effect. They have a chalky distemper-like tone,
which is very unpleasing.

In calling this picture the Shin Piece, Mr. Randolph accused
a defect of composition. If I understand the gibe, it meant
that there was an undue prominence and exhibition of legs in
the work. Now, in point of fact, this is the last charge which
he should have made ; nay, if Mr. Randolph had any special
aversion for legs, he owed a tribute of praise to the artist for
sparing him in that regard, since, of more than forty persons
who are there assembled, ten only show their legs. The gibe,
however, took with the house, because the house was, by its

The Trumbull Gallery. 149

tedium, prepared for a laugh, and not prepared to do justice to
the painter.

The veteran artist, whose feelings were thus wounded, was
but a few feet distant from the shameless orator. He after-
wards assured me, with tears in his eyes, that up to that
moment he had always believed Randolph his personal friend.
If those who echoed and still echo that paltry jest, will look
carefully at the Declaration of Independence, they will see that
the fact of those legs appearing in small-clothes, no longer
familiar to the eye, calls attention to them in an undue manner,
and they will rather pity the spirit and the intelligence which
overlooked this difficulty, than blame the painter for an inevita-
ble consequence of the change of fashion.

BURKE ON THE BEAUTIFUL

Burke has developed, at length, the negative examination of
beauty. He arrives at no result by this course, because nega-
tive analysis can only attain its object by exhausting negation ;
which is not possible in this vast field of inquiry.

When, at last, he affirms, he says roundly that Beauty is a
positive entity, cognizable by the sense. He proceeds to enu-
merate the qualities which, he thinks, constitute beauty in visi-
ble objects. He states these as follows : Smallness, Smooth-
ness, Gradual Variation, Delicacy, Color.

Smallness. — One may well be startled at the list of positive
entities which commences with size, for which, even in trade,
we have only an approximative standard. The pendulum
which beats seconds in a given latitude must share the imper-
fection of the measure of time ; it must feel, more or less, the
variation of temperature in its dimension. The bare element
of size exj)lains to me the grandeur of the Alp and the Ele-
phant, the endearing dependence of the babe, and the attraction
of the humming-bird ; but the significance of dimension in all
these cases, and in everv case that I conceive, is a relative sig-

Burke on the Beautiful. 151

nificance. When Burke found the sense of the sublime to
result alike from the contemplation of the orbs that roll in
space, and the idea of beings that elude the test of the micro-
scope, I must think that he should have concluded that the
sublime is no quality in things, having a positive existence, but
a mental perception of. relation.

Smoothness. — This, again, is a relative quality. The smooth-
ness of the teeth, and of a marble or porphyry table, is one ;
the smoothness of the eye-ball, the brow, the cheek is an-
other. If any one doubt the organic significance of smoothness,
let him imao-ine the smoothness of the teeth transferred to the
lip, that of the eye-ball to the eye-lid, that of the varnished bud
of April to the petal of the rose in June, that of the billiard-
ball to the hand of the maiden. Smoothness is mere negation,
The smoothness of the eye-ball is on the one hand a ball and
socket smoothness, like that of the head of the femur and the
acetabulum, a lubricated smoothness. It is on the other hand
a crystalline smoothness, related to the function of transmit-
ting light and color. The smoothness of cutlery, as it comes
from the hand of the artisan, is an organic smoothness. The
perfection of the polish proclaims the entireness of the promise.
It begins to lose that polish as soon as its action commences,
and at last retains mainly the beauty of form. If any one
doubt that the perception of smoothness is a relative percep-
tion, let him, for one minute, rub the palms of his hands upon
sandstone, and then rub them together.

Gradual Variation. — Variation is characteristic of organic

152 Burke ok the Beautiful.

rhythm, whether in the works of nature or those of man ; but
the perception of gradation is the perception of relation, whether
the gradation be one of size, or of form, or of tint. To prove
gradation a positive element of beauty, it would be necessary
to show that the greater the gradation, or the greater the vari-
ety of gradation, the greater would be the beauty, an assertion
to be easily estimated after a glance at the human eye.

Delicacy. — By delicacy, as an element of beauty, Burke is
careful to tell us that he does not mean weakness, or any modi-
fication in the direction of weakness, but only the absence of
roughness and excessive robustness. Now, it is not apparent
that he means anything more, by this quality, than a normal
and healthy apportionment of means to ends ; if he does, then
has he foisted into the academy the taste of the boudoir and
the drawing-room, which can only earn respect there as a pupil.
His delicacy in such case must share the fate of Hogarth's
" grandeur of the periwig" and be the creature, of convention —
ridiculous, except in the time, place, and circumstances that
gave its value.

If you can establish the opinion that ladies should hobble
about with difficulty, the crippled foot would please our eyes,
as it is said to charm those of the Mandarin. If you can prove
that the human hand was intended as a proclamation of idle-
ness and effeminacy, the nauseous claws seen in the east, and
sometimes cultivated by persons in civilized countries, will have
a suggestive charm.

Color. — That the modifications of light have an organic

Burke on the Beautiful. 153

significance and are not positive elements of beauty, results to
my mind from the fact that there is a degree of light which sur-
feits, a want of it which starves the visual organ. The absence
of color in the teeth is as beautiful as its presence in the lips.
The contrast of the two heightens each, and exemplifies a
charm where gradual variation has no place. Now its absence
in the one case and the presence in the other has an organic
and functional import and meaning. The dark polish of ice
and the pure white of snow are alike mechanical defences of
the permanence of these forms of water.

I think it of the highest importance that we continue the
investigation of the functional significance of color, rather than
close the school with an anodyne formula, because whether the
eye be adapted to objects in nature, or these to the eye, true it
is that the relation is a vital one. I will be rash enough to
confess, that I have an instinctive belief, that the eye is, under
God, the creature of the sun ; for I find it made in his own
image, and I seek it in vain in such fishes, for instance, as
know him not.

In order to prove that beauty consists of positive elements,
cognizable by the sense, I think it must be shown, that the
beauty is in proportion to the presence of the elements, and that
where these elements are diminished or suppressed for the sake
of function, beauty shall be diminished in proportion to their
absence. Now this may be done to the satisfaction of the milli-
ner or the " petite maitresse" but never to the satisfaction of the
philosopher or the artist.

154 Burke on the Beautiful.

Burke was bold when he invited the world to a feast of
beauty, with so meagre a bill of fare. With the exception of
delicacy, by which I know not what he means, in philosophy, I
believe that all the other elements he has mentioned can be
exemplified and even combined into the most sickening mani-
festation of morbid action. Skin disease and imposthume will
display them all, and force the student to go farther for the
secret of beauty, even at the risk of faring worse.

It is natural to suppose that the soul of any civilization will
find utterance in its statement of what its love is and should be.
Have not theories of beauty been invented to fit " spoon
fashion " certain systems of politics and morals ? Is it not from
an unconscious desire to constitute and limit the good that we
seek the good with such starveling formulas ? I believe the
Beautiful to be the promise and announcement of the good ; to
seek the semblance thereof, rather than the true, has been, is,
and must be the occupation of such as seek the beautiful only
in pursuit of the good.

He who seeks the beautiful in the stupendous system of
nature, will seek in vain for a positive entity, whose elements,
cognizable by sense, can be set down like the ingredients of a
dish, or the inventory of a portmanteau. I doubt if he ever
find anything more tangible than the human soul ; if he does
I will venture to predict that it will be somewhat more than
small, smooth, gradually varied, delicate, and of pleasing color.

To the generality of men the sight of a skull, whether of
man or beast, is rather painful. They view it in relation to

Burke on the Beautiful. ]55

disorganization, of which we all have an instinctive horror.
Why, then, to the anatomist and the artist is the skull a beau-
tiful, a sublime object ? Because they have minutely investi-
gated its relation to life. All its forms, surfaces, and dimen-
sions speak of its former contents, vesture, and capacities. That
pale spheroidal dome is a model of the globe, those lack-lustre
eyeless holes beneath, speak of the heavens ; they echo the dis-
tant sun.

Why, in the crowded thoroughfare, do we pass nine men in
ten without emotion, and as if they were not ? Why are we
so patiently incurious respecting the myriads of human beings
who have laid the basis of our actual being ? Why in the
first sight of a foreign city, whose language is as unknown to
us as its streets, does the heart shrink back on itself? Why,
in such position, does the coin in our pockets assume an im-
portance unfelt before? In all cases because of relation. This
it is that makes the Austrian prince* spurn, as less than man,
all beneath the barons. This it is which melts the divine
Saviour into tenderness at the sight of sin and sorrow. The
positive sound of cannon is not much ; it is relation that makes
the growl of the morning gun at Gibraltar the voice of the
British lion, and, therefore, does the responsive thunder of
Ceuta sound a good morrow from the African shore. When,
in the breathless court, the word "guilty" drops from the lips
of the foreman, why does it ring satisfaction to the ear of the

* Der Menscli feengt mit dem Baron an. — Dictum of "Windischgratz.

156 Burke on the Beautiful.

stern attorney, and for the prisoner at the bar strike the larum
of despair ? It is the relative import of things that character-
izes their perception, and that with which we have no relation,
for us is not.

With what positive result do we, then, close this review of
Mr. Burke's position ? With a conviction which, if it be well
grounded, is not only of artistic but of general importance. In a
world of dependence and of relation to a being like man, whose
isolated mind collapses to idiocy, whose isolated body is the
slave of its lower want, that which is fitted to one relation is
therefore unfitted for another and different relation. That which
is beautiful in one connexion is therefore deformed in another
and different connexion. To deal with relative elements, as if
they were positive, is to insure discord and disorganization — for
as the charm of rhyme resides not in " dove" or " love," but in
the perception of the dependence of sound, — as the charm of
verse lies not in its positive structure, but in the relation it bears
to the thought, and the breath that makes it heard, so has all
that sways the mind, the heart, the sense of man, only a rela-
tive and dependent being.

The entire gamut of visual qualities in objects, is, therefore,
a language, a tongue, whose vocabulary must be learned, word
by word, and which has already been mastered to an extent
that justifies the surmise, that its elements have force from their
relation, and not from positive existence; since God alone
truly is.

CRITICISM IN SEARCH OP BEAUTY.

To many minds the definition of Beauty as the promise of
function, must appear an excessive generalization. To many
minds such expanse dilutes all substance, and leaves but their
air as a result. Yet is this generalization but an effort to
grasp a wider collection of phenomena, and, if developed, it is
not certain that it will prove other than a step to a wider and
a higher generalization.

Hogarth's ingenious plea for his line of beauty, holds good
with regard to the spinal column and the necks of long necked
birds and beasts. It is the line of moving water, of flowing
draperies, and of many pleasing vegetable forms, but if we
drop from the flank of the horse where we find it, to the shank
which is thin, straight, and hard, we get a new sense of
beauty, and not a sacrifice thereof. With Hogarth's formula in
hand we must accept the vagaries of Bernini, and condemn the
Greek peristyle and pediment. This famed line is truly in-
dicative of motion, of the double element of inertia or resist-
ance on the one hand, and of a moving power on the other.
From its inevitable significance and uniformity of expression, it

158 Criticism in Search of Beauty.

becomes monotonous by repetition, incongruous and imperti-
nent wherever such double action is out of place. Transfer the
waving line of a horse's flank to his metatarsal bone, and you
have a cripple. Transfer the double curve of a swan's neck to
his bill, and you have an impotent and therefore ridiculous
arrangement.

The right line is perhaps susceptible of more various signi-
ficance than any other line whatever. The right line vertical,
as seen in the pendent chain, is indicative of utter flexibility ; in
the staff whose base is buried, of stark rigidity. Horizontal, it
proclaims equal support throughout its length, whether from
its own consistence or from extraneous prop. Inclined, it de-
clares a double thrust in opposite directions. Observe the
folds of linen that drop, like organ pipes, from the girdle of
Pallas; transfer your eye to yonder spear on which Adonis
leans ; remark how nearly identical are the forms, how directly
reversed is the expression of these cylindrical shapes ! Such
forms have therefore a force and a. speech analogous to the
virtues of the vocabulary. Their significance is relative and
dependent. They may not be safely used as positive entities.

Let us dwell, for a moment, upon one of the chief means of
embellishment, the adoption of the sequence and rhythm of
organization, as an sesthetical element of positive import, apart
from all requirement, save the craving of the eye. The leaf,
the flower, the chain — the contorted spiral of the cable, the
alternations of the woven withe of the basket, have, among
other similar functional arrangements, been pressed into the

Criticism in Search op Beauty. 159

service of the decorator, to fill that vacuum which the heart
of man abhors. The eye responds inevitably to the sensuous
charm, and the associated expression of these forms ; but, if
we reflect deeply on the source of this gratification, we shall
detect their real character. Thus enjoyed, this rhythm is never
truly generative ; — for, if the organizations they were intended
to complete, had no requirement of their oivn, whose spaces
and means have been usurped by their quotations, then I affirm
that these extraneous and irrelevant forms invade that silence
which alone is worthy of man, when there is nothing to be
said. To my sense, therefore, these forms only accuse a vacuum.
They accuse it credibly, and the eye assents to them ; but
though they accuse they do not Jill it, since the more we get
of them the more we ask, until performance reels and slavery dies,
under the requirement. Such is the result of dealing with
the relative and finite, as if it were a positive, a divine being.

What is the real meaning of that vast aggregation of mar-
ble and gilding — of silks and jewels, of glass and metal, of
carved and painted embellishment which is called St. Peter's
church ? Throwing and holding aloft the gilded symbol of
self-sacrifice and love to man, whose glimmer flashes on the
one hand to the gulf of Geneva, on the other to the waves of
the Adriatic, is it not a giant's attempt to scale the heavens?
— the affirmation of the positive in the relative — a mechanical
assertion of spirit — an attempt at arithmetical demonstration
that Christ's kingdom is of this world ? When, amid the
gorgeous retinue of bedizened prelates, the triple crowned

160 Criticism in Search of Beauty.

Pontiff, crippled by weight of frippery, is borne on subject
shoulders to that balcony, when the peacocks' tails are waved
about his head, and he utters his presumptuous blessing,
" Urbi et Orbi," — while kneeling troops clash their weapons as
they go down, and trumpets laugh and cannons thunder from
the fortress of the Holy Angel ; — when the sense and the
imagination is thus appealed to in base assertion, what is the
practical result ? What are the fruits, by which alone this
tree must at last be judged ? The perfumed sweetness of that
vast pile hath cured no yellow and swollen victim of Pontine
miasma. The weight of that expenditure hath crushed to
earth the denizens of the patrimony of St. Peter ; since Mary
must bring daily the precious ointment for a Christ who is
always with us ; and whose worldly pomp outvies the arro-
gance of kings. For each effeminate warbling of soprano
Latin praise to God in the temple, there go up a thousand
curses of tyrants, in the vernacular, from the thoroughfare,
the hovel, and the dungeon. When was the absolute other
than the paramour of the expedient ? Would the papal cross
at this moment stand but for the piled dollars of the Israelite
where it has been pawned ?

To what, at length, is the size of St. Peter's church related ?
Is it a lodging for prayer ? Christ has recommended a closet.
Is it to receive the laity of the earth ? All earth is a temple to
him who looks upward, and naught less will suffice for man.
The size of St. Peter's church is, therefore, a pretension. It
affirms of the tree its 1 its soil, and its branches ; and

Criticism in Search of Beauty. 161

these it measures. As a result of nearly two thousand years,
preaching of the doctrine of self-sacrifice and the laying up of
treasure in Heaven, it is a reductio ad absurdum.

Criticism has shaped another theory of Beauty. The
beautiful has been defined as a result of the combination of
Uniformity with Variety. This combination is indeed uni-
versally found in organization, whether in the works of nature
or of man ; but the theory asserts too much, since, if true,
beauty can be produced by mere mechanical means, and
England would make it with steam power, and flood the globe
therewith. This theory is sustained in the hope of divorcing
the beautiful and the good. It is sustained in the hope of
giving the former and receiving the latter. The sensuous
adjunct of intention, when divorced from that intention, loses
at once its virtue, and retains its charm only so long as its
emptiness is unsuspected. The smile of benevolence may be
assumed also, and may pass currently with the world, but if too
many practise this beautiful art, frowns will at last come to be
in fashion.

"When Homer would give us the idea of womanly charm in
Helen, he seeks no positive ingredients to wake our enthusiasm.
He makes the princess to pass through a crowd of aged men,
who are reviling her as the cause of their woe, and at her aspect
they are hushed in mute admiration. "When she has passed
away, they swear with one accord that such a vision is worth
the ten years' war, and the burning of the ships and the slaugh-
ter of the men. Achilles, who remains in every scholar's mind

8*

162 Criticism in Search of Beauty.

the type of manly beauty, is painted as swift of foot, and the
most beautiful of all the Greeks who went to Troy. These
beauties, then, have been created by relation in our own minds,
and we have done the work with the bard ; and it is because
that work is a delight that we love him. If criticism had other
than a negative power we might reproduce the phenomena of
a Shakspeare or a Dante. It is because the speech of these
men is inalienably theirs, related more to themselves than to
the positive, that we may hope to approach the latter rather
than to repeat them.

The creation of beauty in art, as in other forms of poetry, is
a welling up from the depths of the soul, not a scientific syn-
thesis. There has been in England, since 1815, more discussion
of sesthetical doctrine, more analysis, experiment, and dogged
determination to effect somewhat in art, than attended the
birth of the Florentine school ; but always in the main impo-
tent, because the governing intellect of England has held art to
be a thing, a plant growing by human knowledge with gold
for its nutriment. Art is not a thing, but a form, a develop-
ment of man — "La vostra Arte quasi di Dio e nipote." The
artistic power, whatever it be, has no positive existence. Like
the organ in our churches, on week-days, it stands dumb and
dead till the constituency drive through its pipes the health of
life, and minister to its requirement.

I will seek to make clearer what I have said by a rapid
glance at the career of pictorial art. In the great works of the
Roman and Florentine schools we behold the highest develop-

Criticism in Search of Beauty. 163

ment of thought and feeling in the pictorial form. These great
masters always based their creations upon tangible, palpable,
every-day truth. The mother bears her babe, the Saviour
embraces his cross. The heavens, as they open, reflect earth,
and worship the Deity with words of human speech. Titian,
in his color, is not less true to the concrete. As art declined,
we find the process to be one of separating the sensuously
pleasing from its organic relation ; till, in Luca Giordano and
Boucher, we find a chaos of bombast, falsehood, and clogging
sensuality. This farrago corrupted still further the appetite
that demanded it, and Boucher had for a successor a worse than
Boucher, till utter impotence gave at length silence and repose.
There is a sensation analogous to the sense of beauty, which
is effected somewhat independent of function, nay running
oftentimes counter to the requirement of function. This is the
offspring of the fashion, the mode, omnipotent for an hour,
contemptible when that hour is passed. I have yet to see any
solid reason for receiving nine-tenths of the architectural fea-
tures of our actual structures as other than a servile obeisance
to this despotic requirement from abroad. He whose eye is
tickled by the play of light and shadow, and the merely pictur-
esque projections of the present fashion, will be inclined to
flout me when I hint that these are a jargon and no tongue.
Their features, which seem of such significance, will, however,
inevitably turn out, at last, like the cant phrases of the rabble,
to mean whatever you please, merely because they mean
nothing. Once adopt the principles by which alone they can

] 64 Criticism in Search op Beauty.

be defended, and there is no bar between you and the prolific
silliness of Borromini, excepting the want of funds. These
feats have effected what I once believed impossible ; they have
made the sober and the true enamored of the old, bald, neutral-
toned, Yankee farm house which seems to belong to the ground
whereon it stands, as the caterpillar to the leaf that feeds him.
The expression of life, which is what we all crave, can only
be obtained by living. I have seen a clergyman of the esta-
blished church, who long appeared to me an overgrown auto-
maton, in which the digestive apparatus was exaggerated. He
was an incarnation of vicarious being. He seemed to have
been taken into the world and done for. Inoffensive was he —
well-begotten and respectable ; for he had been educated among
scholars — dressed by a tailor, and dressed well — shaved by a
barber, and well shorn — insured by a solvent company here
below — saved by his Saviour in the world to come, so that one
saw no obstacle to his translation to another sphere except his
weight. Yet was all this only apparent, for no sooner was a
trout stream mentioned than the kaleidoscope revolved, the fog
rolled from before his eyes, and he became animated and alert.
There was after all an agendum. Now it is clear that this man
was a crushed individuality, born out of time or place. Like
the potato which has sprouted in the crypt, this poor soul had
sent its pale elongated shoot through darkness and prohibition,
till it found the light and air of freedom at a cranny, when it
instantly assumed its color, threw out its leaves and was — a
human otter.

Criticism in Search of Beauty. 165

If it were true that the sense of beauty in nature and in art
finds its nourishment in the pleasing, independent of other than
its own relation to the innate craving of man ; if it were true
that beauty is a tertium quid thrown into ingredients in them-
selves indifferent, to fill a psychological vacuum, — as salt and
sugar are added to compounds which offend through acid or
pall by insipidity, then should we behold professors of beauty,
who would translate into the vulgar tongue what Mahomet
meant by his houris, what the Northmen meant by drinking
beer in skulls, what the Indian meant by his happy hunting
grounds, what the Christian preacher means by that which
" eye hath not seen nor ear heard V The man possessed of
this catholicon would be able to adorn and sanctify the hum-
blest, the most repulsive details of life. These details are, in
fact, adorned and sanctified to man — not by any combination
of uniformity with variety, or waving line, or other like futile
mechanical grasp at the unspeakable, but by their relation to
" things hoped for"

The men who, in Greece and Italy, earned a remembrance as
creators of the beautiful, were most untiring students of organi-
zation, of the relations of antecedence and consequence. More
has been said about the art of pleasing by ingenious English-
men and Frenchmen than can be found in all the disquisitions
of Leonardo, or Leon Batista, Alberti, or Raffaello. How does
he of Urbino, who has held the world captive, define the beau-
tiful which was his magic sceptre ? He says, in plain words,

166 Criticism in Search of Beauty.

that it was a " certa idea che ho nella mente," a certain idea
that I have in my mind.

The skilful analysis of the relations of color and sound in
their modifications, to the rhythm of organization, tending
without doubt to assist our conception of all related things, is
but the servant and never the master of creative mind. Deal-
ing with such elements only as the reason has incarnated in
propositions, they have in that incarnation dropped all divinity
which is unspeakable, and have taken their humble place among
things. Such results are but the record of a mental, as the foot-
print of man is the record of a physical function, proclaiming,
it is true, the beauty of the related parts which achieved the
step, but impotent as a creative power. As well may you hope
to beget eloquence of pure grammar, as music of science, or
beautv of things.

Organization and dissolution ; these are the two poles of the
divine magnet, and to the pure intelligence the one is as har-
monious a speech as the other, since it is its correlative. That
the sense revolts at the phenomena of disorganization proves
only the relation of the body to things ; but that relation being
a divine datum, the marriage of the sensuous phenomena of life
to the action of decay, cannot be other than poisonous and
suicidal.

Is the display which has lantern-led princes and people
other than a rhythm of disorganization sensuously enjoyed
because its functional significance was not apparent? If the
moral and political phenomena attendant upon vigorous

Criticism in Search of Beauty. 167

attempts after beauty, independent of function, had not been
constant and unvarying, I should doubt any mental induction
that accused such import in adornment. Luxury and decay
have not been separated, and the only terms on which both can
be long kept up, is to regard the crucified homo as a symbol
of collective man made the grovelling basis of exceptional
development and well-being.

Whence is derived the attraction of the play-house and the
opera ? I believe that these fruits of civilization are pleasing,
but, to the mass, sensuous special pleadings against the dogma
which, condemning the body, commands us to perish. Feeling
a void in our hearts, amid the negative requirements of the law-
giver and the priest, we ask the spectacle at least of untram-
melled life, and hire the dancing girl to give a vicarious grace
and joy, driven from among us by a sour and one-sided dogma.
Now, it will be apparent to reflection and to the heart, that the
dancing girl is degraded by representing a fraction of huma-
nity. The greater her beauty, the more perfect the response of
her limbs and the vivacity of her foot to the joyous notes of
the composer, the greater the degradation. That divine instru-
ment before us is the representative of womanhood, and is
degraded by aught less than true woman's life. Not with
impunity, therefore, shall we gaze upon her in that monstrous
relation, for, though we may forget it, yet is she nevertheless our
sister. There is here a sin, and a grievous sin — not in the light
of that eve that flashes, not in the music of that frame that
takes captive the sense, not in the panting of that, perhaps,

168 Criticism in Search of Beauty.

virgin bosom, but in the hireling divorce of these phenomena
from their normal and organic sequence in human life. There
lies the prostitution — there the selfishness and the vice, and
therefore the destruction.

The East Indian bigot who seeks to please God by main-
taining one posture till the articulations have stiffened him to a
monument of monomania and the paid exponent of youthful
joy and desire — these are extreme expressions of a prohibition
to live. As the one kills by checking function, so the other
destroys by the inculcation of vicarious life. I will close this
statement by an affirmation which formerly could not have
been spoken without perishing in the flames ; and which, even
now, cannot perhaps be spoken with impunity. That which
the human being was made to bear, the human being was not
made to bear the want of.

To follow blindly the dictates of sense and instinctive crav-
ing — that is, to be a brute and not a man ; to deny the prompt-
ings of sense and instinctive craving, that is to perish. Behold
the absolute. Between these lies human life — an existence for
which no revelation will ever afford a mechanical rule or abso-
lute dogma, without its immediate translation from time to
eternity ; for to seek the true — this is truly to live in time
which only is through succession of phenomena to find it —
this will be to repose in the bosom of omniscience, for where
all is absolutely right nothing can change. Since truth is not
a series of approximations, but an arrival and a result.

Therefore do I feel that this American people is the advanced

Criticism in Search of Beauty. 169

guard of humanity. Because it is one vast interrogation.
Never affirming but when there is need of action ; in its affirm-
ation conceding that the minority represents a sacred human
want not yet articulate to the aggregate ear ; it gives peace
and good will in proportion to the universality of the wants to
which it ministers. If the passion displayed in the alternation
of hope and fear fright the timid and skeptical, the lull of the
storm, when the sovereignty has spoken, is full of hope for a
distant futurity, for it proves that our political constitution, like
the human frame, is not less wonderfully than fearfully made,

STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION.

It is useless to regret that discussions of principle involve, to a
certain extent, persons also. If this were not, on the whole, a
-good arrangement, principles would have been furnished with
a better lodging. I take it, that passions and interests are the
great movers and steadiers of the social world, and that prin-
ciples, like the bread on Sir John Falstaff's score, are an uncon-
scionably small item.

The working forces and restraints are, like the furnaces and
engines, the lock up and lock out of the mint at Philadelphia,
all very effective for their objects. A showy front masks all
these things, and adorns Chesnut street by the maimed quota-
tion of a passage of Greek eloquence, relating to something
else. A huge brick chimney rising in the rear, talks English,
and warns you that the facade is to be taken with some grains
of allowance.

The domain of Taste is eminently one of free discussion. In
most civilized countries, the individual is restrained by the
magistracy from offending the public eye, by unsightly or ill-
timed exhibitions of any very peculiar dogma of his own,

Structure and Organization. 171

because it is thought that the harm thus done to the public is
not compensated by the gratification of the unit. Still, he is
allowed to maintain his theory by any means short of an inva-
sion of the public sense of propriety.

One unaccustomed to trace the influence of associated ideas,
of example, and of authority, would naturally suppose that
each climate, each creed and form of Government, would stamp
its character readily and indelibly upon the structures of a
thinking population. It is not so. It is only by degrees that
leisure and wealth find means to adapt forms, elsewhere invented,
to new situations and new wants.

When civilization gradually developes an indigenous type,
the complex result still carries the visible germ whence it
sprang. The harmony of the Chinese structures indicates a
oneness of origin and modification. The sign-manual of the
Sultan is but the old mark pompously flourished. There is a
blood-relationship between the pipe of the North American
savage and the temples of Central America.

In the architecture of Greece, of Italy, and of the more recent
civilizations on the other hand, we remark a struggle between
an indigenous type, born of the soil and of the earlier wants of
a people, and an imported theory which, standing upon a
higher artistic ground, captivates the eye and wins the approval
of dawning taste. If my limits permitted, it were not amiss to
trace this conquest of refinement, and to follow it out also, in
relation to literature, and to dress, and amusements. The least
effort of memory will suggest numerous invasions of artistic

172 Structure and Organization.

theory upon primitive expedients, conflicts between the home-
grown habit which has possession, and exotic theory w r hich
seeks it.

There is one feature in all the great developments of archi-
tecture which is worthy to occupy us for a moment. They are
all fruits of a dominating creed. If we consider how vast was
the outlay they required, we shall not wonder that religion
alone has thus far been able to unite, in a manner to wield
them, the motives and the means for grand and consistent
systems of structure. The magnificence of the Romans, the
splendor of Venice and Genoa, like the ambitious efforts of
France, England, and Germany in more recent days, had a cer-
tain taint of dilettantism in their origin, which, aiming to com-
bine inconsistent qualities, and that for a comparatively low
motive, carried through all their happiest combinations the
original sin of impotence, and gave as a result, bombast instead
of eloquence, fritter instead of richness, boldness for simplicity,
carving in lieu of sculpture. The laws of expression are such
that the various combinations which have sought to lodge
modern functions in buildings composed of ancient elements,
developed and perfected for other objects, betray, in spite of all
the skill that has been brought to bear upon them, their bastard
origin. In literature, the same struggle between the ancient
form so dear to scholars, and the modern thought which was
out-growing it, was long and obstinate. In literature the battle
has been won by the modern thought. The models of Greece
are not less prized for this. We seek them diligently, we

Structure and Organization. 173

ponder them with delight and instruction. We assimilate all
of their principles that is true and beautiful, and we learn of
them to belong to our day and to our nation, as they to theirs.

In all structure that from its nature is purely scientific, in
fortifications, in bridges, in ship-building, we have been eman-
cipated from authority by the stern organic requirements of the
works. The modern wants spurned the traditional formula in
these structures, as the modern life outgrew the literary moulds
of Athens. In all these structures, character has taken the
place of dilettantism, and if we have yet to fight for sound
doctrine in all structure, it is only because a doctrine which has
possession must be expelled, inch by inch, however unsound its
foundation.

The developments of structure, in the animal kingdom, are
worthy of all our attention, if we would arrive at sound prin-
ciples in building. The most striking feature in the higher
animal organizations is, the adherence to one abstract type.
The forms of the fish and the lizard, the shape of the horse,
and the lion, and the camelopard, are so nearly framed after
one type, that the adherence thereto seems carried to the verge
of risk. The next most striking feature is the modification of
the parts, which, if contemplated independently of the exposure
and the functions whose demands are thus met, seems carried
to the verge of caprice. I believe few persons not conversant
with natural history, ever looked through a collection of birds,
or fish, or insects, without feeling that they were the result of
Omnipotence at play, for mere variety's sake.

1*74 Structure and Organization.

If there be any principle of structure more plainly inculcated
in the works of the Creator than all others, it is the principle of
unflinching adaptation of forms to functions. I believe that
colors also, so far as we have discovered their chemical causes
and affinities, are not less organic in relation to the forms they
invest than are those forms themselves.

If I find the length of the vertebrae of the neck in grazing
quadrupeds increased, so as to bring the incisors to the grass ;
if I find the vertebrae shortened in beasts of prey, in order to
enable the brute to bear away his victim ; if I find the wading
birds on stilts, the strictly aquatic birds with paddles ; if, in
pushing still further the investigation, I find color arrayed
either for disguise or aggression, I feel justified in taking the
ground that organization is the primal law of structure, and I
suppose it, even where my imperfect light cannot trace it, unless
embellishment can be demonstrated. Since the tints as well
as the forms of plants and flowers, are shown to have an orga-
nic significance and value, I take it for granted that tints have
a like character in the mysteriously clouded and pearly shell,
where they mock my ken. I cannot believe that the myriads
are furnished at the depths of the ocean, with the complicated
glands and absorbents, to nourish those dyes, in order that the
hundreds may charm my idle eye as they are tossed in disor-
ganized ruin upon the beach.

Let us dwell for a moment upon the forms of several of the
higher types of animal structure. Behold the eagle, as he sits
on the lonely cliff, towering high in the air ; carry in your mind

Structure and Organization. 175

the proportions and lines of the dove, and mark how the finger
of God has, by the mere variation of diameters, converted the
type of meekness into the most expressive symbol of majesty.
His eye, instead of rushing as it were out of his head, to see
the danger behind him, looks steadfastly forward from its deep
cavern, knowing no danger but that which it pilots. The struc-
ture of his brow allows him to fly upwards with his eyes in shade.
In his beak and his talons we see at once the belligerent, in the
vast expanse of his sailing pinions the patent of his prerogative.
Dei Gratia Raptor ! Whence the beauty and majesty of the
bird ? It is the oneness of his function that gives him his
grandeur, it is transcendental mechanism alone that begets his
beauty. Observe the lion as he stands ! Mark the ponderous
predominance of his anterior extremities — his lithe loins, the
lever of his hock — the awful breadth of his jaws, and the depth
of his chest. His mane is a cuirass, and when the thunder of his
voice is added to the glitter of his snarling jaws, man alone
with all his means of defence stands self-possessed before him.
In this structure again are beheld, as in that of the eagle, the
most terrible expression of power and dominion, and we find
that it is here also the result of transcendental mechanism.
The form of the hare might well be the type of swiftness for
him who never saw the greyhound. The greyhound overtakes
him, and it is not possible in organization that this result
should obtain, without the promise and announcement of it, in
the lengths and diameters of this breed of dogs.

Let us now turn to the human frame — the most beautiful

1*76 Structure and Organization.

organization of earth, the exponent and minister of the highest
being we immediately know. This stupendous form, towering
as a light-house, commanding by its posture a wide horizon,
standing in relation to the brutes where the spire stands in rela-
tion to the lowly colonnades of Greece and Egypt, touching earth
with only one half the soles of its feet — it tells of majesty and
dominion by that upreared spine, of duty by those unencum-
bered hands. Where is the ornament of this frame ? It is all
beauty, its motion is grace, no combination of harmony ever
equalled, for expression and variety, its poised and stately gait ;
its voice is music, no cunning mixture of wood and metal ever
did more than feebly imitate its tone of command or its warble
of love. The savage who envies or admires the special attri-
butes of beasts, maims unconsciously his own perfection, to
assume their tints, their feathers, or their claws ; we turn from
him with horror, and gaze with joy on the naked Apollo.

I have dwelt a moment on these examples of expression and
of beauty, that I may draw from them a principle in Art, a
principle which, if it has been often illustrated by brilliant
results, we constantly see neglected, overlooked, forgotten — a
principle which I hope the examples I have given have pre-
pared you to accept at once, and unhesitatingly. It is this —
in Art, as in nature, the soul, the purpose of a w r ork will never
fail to be proclaimed in that work in proportion to the subor-
dination of the parts to the whole, of the whole to the function.
If you will trace the ship through its various stages of improve-
ment, from the dug-out canoe and the old galley, to the latest

Structure and Organization. 177

type of the sloop-of-war, you will remark that every advance in
performance has been an advance in expression, in grace, in
beauty, or grandeur, according to the functions of the craft.
This artistic gain, effected by pure science in some respects, in
others by mere empirical watching of functions where the ele-
ments of the structure were put to severe tests, calls loudly
upon the artist to keenly watch traditional dogmas, and to see
how far analogous rules may guide his own operations. You
will remark, also, that after mechanical power had triumphed
over the earlier obstacles, embellishment began to encumber
and hamper ships, and that their actual approximation to
beauty has. been effected first, by strict adaptation of forms to
functions ; second, by the gradual elimination of all that is irre-
levant and impertinent. The old chairs were formidable by
their weight, puzzled you by their carving, and often contained
too much else to contain convenience and comfort. The most
beautiful chairs invite you by a promise of ease, and they keep
that promise ; they bear neither flowers nor dragons, nor idle
displays of the turner's caprice. By keeping within their pro-
vince they are able to fill it well. Organization has a language
of its own, and so expressive is that language, that a make-shift
or make-believe can scarce fail of detection. The swan, the
goose, the duck, when they walk towards the water are awk-
ward, when they hasten towards it are ludicrous. Their feet
are paddles, and their legs are organized mainly to move those
paddles in the water ; they, therefore, paddle on land, or as we
sav, waddle. It is onlv when their breasts are launched into

9

178 Structure and Organization.

the pond that their necks assume the expression of ease and
grace. A serpent, upon a smooth hard road, has a similar
awkward expression of impotence ; the grass, or pebbles, or
water, as he meets either, afford him his sine qua non, and he
is instantly confident, alert, effective.

If I err not, we should learn from these and the like exam-
ples, which will meet us wherever we look for them, that God's
world has a distinct formula for every function, and that we
shall seek in vain to borrow shapes ; we must make the shapes,
and can only effect this by mastering the principles.

It is a confirmation of the doctrine of strict adaptation that
I find in the purer Doric temple. The sculptures which adorned
certain spaces in those temples had an organic relation to the
functions of the edifice ; they took possession of the worshipper
as he approached, lifted him out of every-day life, and prepared
him for the presence of the divinity within. The w T orld has
never seen plastic art developed so highly as by the men who
translated into marble in the tympanum and the metope; the
theogony and the exploits of the heroes. Why, then, those
columns uncarved? Why, then, those lines of cornice un-
broken by foliages, unadorned by flowers? Why, that match-
less symmetry of eveiy member, that music of gradation, with-
out the tracery of the gothic detail, without the endless caprices
of arabesque ? Because those sculptures spake, and speech
asks a groundwork of silence and not of babble, though it were
of green fields.
, I am not about to deny the special beauties and value of any

Structure and Organization. 179

of the great types of building. Each has its meaning and
expression. I am desirous now of analysing that majestic and
eloquent simplicity of the Greek temple, because, though I
truly believe that it is hopeless to transplant its forms with any
other result than an expression of impotent dilettantism, still I
believe that its principles will be found to be those of all struc-
tures of the highest order.

When I gaze upon the stately and beautiful Parthenon, I do
not wonder at the greediness of the moderns to appropriate it.
I do wonder at the obtuseness which allowed them to persevere
in trying to make it work in the towns. It seems like the en-
thusiasm of him who should squander much money to transfer
an Arabian stallion from his desert home, that, as a blindfolded
gelding, he might turn his mill. The lines in which Byron paints
the fate of the butterfly that has fallen into the clutches of its
childish admirer, would apply not inaptly to the Greek temple,
at the mercy of a sensible building committee, wisely deter-
mined to have their money's worth.

When high art declined, carving and embellishment invaded
the simple organization. As the South Sea Islanders have
added a variety to the human form by tattooing, so the cunning
artisans of Greece undertook to go beyond perfection. Many
rhetoricians and skilled grammarians refined upon the elements
of the language of structure. They all spake : and demigods,
and heroes, and the gods themselves, went away and were
silent.

If we compare the simpler form of the Greek temple with the

180 Structure and Organization.

ornate and carved specimens which followed it, we shall be con-
vinced, whatever the subtlety, however exquisite the taste that
long presided over those refinements, that they were the begin-
ning of the end, and that the turning point was the first introduc-
tion of a fanciful, not demonstrable, embellishment, and for
this simple reason, that embellishment being arbitrary, there is
no check upon it; you begin with acanthus leaves, but the
appetite for sauces, or rather the need of them, increases as the
palate gets jaded. You want jasper, and porphyry, and ser-
pentine, and giallo antico, at last. Nay, you are tired of Aris-
tides the Just, and of straight columns ; they must be spiral,
and by degrees you find yourself in the midst of a barbaric
pomp, whose means must be slavery, nothing less will supply
its waste, whose enjoyment is satiety, whose result is corrup-
tion.

It was a day of danger for the development of taste in this
land, the day when Englishmen perceived that France was lay-
ing them under contribution by her artistic skill in manufac-
ture. They organized reprisals upon ourselves, and, in lieu of
truly artistic combinations, they have overwhelmed us with
embellishment, arbitrary, capricious, setting at defiance all
principle, meretricious dyes and tints, catch-penny novelties of
form, steam-woven fineries and plastic ornaments, struck with
the die or pressed into moulds. In even an ordinary house we
look around in vain for a quiet and sober resting-place for the
eye ; we see naught but flowers, flourishes — the renaissance
of Louis Quatorze gingerbread embellishment. We seek

Structure and Organization. 181

in vain for aught else. Our own manufacturers have caught
the furor, and our foundries pour forth a mass of ill-digested
and crowded embellishment, which one would suppose addres-
sed to the sympathies of savages or of the colored population,
if the utter absence of all else in the market were not too
striking to allow such a conclusion.

I do not suppose it is possible to check such a tide as that
which sets all this corruption towards our shores. I am aware
of the economical sagacity of the English, and how fully they
understand the market ; but I hope that we are not so through-
ly asphyxiated by the atmosphere they have created, as to fol-
low their lead in our own creation of a higher order. I remark
with joy, that almost all the more important efforts of this land
tend, with an instinct and a vigor born of the institutions, to-
wards simple and effective organization ; and they never fail
whenever they toss overboard the English dictum, and work from
their own inspirations, to surpass the British, and there, too,
where the world thought them safe from competition.

I would fain beg any architect who allows fashion to invade
the domain of principles, to compare the American vehicles
and ships with those of England, and he will see that the
mechanics of the United States have already outstripped the
artists, and have, by the results of their bold and unflinching
adaptation, entered the true track, and hold up the light for all
who operate for American wants, be they what they will.

In the American trotting waggon I see the old-fashioned and

182 Structure and Organization.

pompous coach dealt with as the old-fashioned palatial display
must yet be dealt with in this land. In vain shall we en-
deavor to hug the associations connected with the old form.
The redundant must be pared down, the superfluous dropped,
the necessary itself reduced to its simplest expression, and then
we shall find, whatever the organization may be, that beauty
was waiting for us, though perhaps veiled, until our task was
fully accomplished.

Far be it from me to pretend that the style pointed out by
our mechanics is what is sometimes miscalled an economical,
a cheap style. No ! It is the dearest of all styles ! It costs
the thought of men, much, very much thought, untiring
investigation, ceaseless experiment. Its simplicity is not the
simplicity of emptiness or of poverty, its simplicity is that of just-
ness, I had almost said, of justice. Your steam artisan would fill
your town with crude plagiarisms, calquis upon the thefts from
Pompeii or modern Venice, while the true student is determining
the form and proportions of one article.

Far be it from me to promise any man that when he has
perfected the type of any artistic product, he shall reap the
fruit of his labor in fame or money. He must not hope it.
Fame and money are to be had in plenty ; not in going against
the current, but in going with it. It is not difficult to conceive
that the same state of the popular taste which makes the cor-
rupted style please, will render the reformed style tasteless. It
is not possible to put artistic products to a test analogous to

Structure and Organization^ 183

that which tries the ship and the carnage, but by a lapse of time.
True it is, that society always reserves a certain number of minds
and of eyes unpoisoned by the vogue of the hour, and in the
sympathy of these must the artist often find his chief reward
in life.

THE COOPER MONUMENT.

It is with great reluctance, nay, with grief, that I have under-
taken to speak of this monument to Cooper. Accustomed to
express my conception in the language of form, and address-
ing the mind and the imagination of the constituency by
means of substantial art, I feel painfully the impotence of my
language to express my feeling as well as my meaning. * * *
I propose for this monument a parallelogram of twenty-four
by forty-eight feet, inclosing a room of about twenty feet high,
equally lighted throughout from above. I propose to raise this
building upon three high steps which will quite surround it.
At the corners of these steps I propose to erect, on pedestals,
four figures illustrating four of Cooper's most striking creations
of character. The external frieze I propose to decorate with
designs embodying national traits described by the poet, and,
in the interior, I propose to call upon four of the ablest painters
of the country to make visible a certain number of his most
effective descriptions. The colossal bronze portrait of Cooper
will ornament the extremity of this room opposite the entrance.
I propose that, in form, this building shall be an example of
symmetry and effective masonry, and that all its parts shall be

The Cooper Monument. 185

specimens of what can be afforded by the country now. I pro-
pose to exclude from the entire work all ornament, except the
graceful modification of the necessary elements, and the picto-
rial and sculptural illustrations I have enumerated.

I count upon the soul of this building to impress itself on the
body, and if, as I believe, its purpose is great and noble, let no
man fear that greatness and nobility will not get utterance
through the hands of those who rear and illustrate it, even as
the leaden types arrange themselves now at the command of
the long buried Shakspeare.

I propose that a large and thoroughly digested model of the
entire work be prepared before anything farther be attempted.

I do not deny that, for the sum of money which this work
will absorb, a vast pile of Gothic fritter or other European
clap-trap could be erected, which would fill all the papers of
the land with hyperbolical eulogium and self-gratulation.

I do not deny that, when all is effected that I propose to
attempt, the spectator must bring to the view of the work a
warm love of the first American Novelist, a keen relish for the
simple, the fervid, the true, or he will go away as they go, who,
enticed by the hope of a feast, only get a sermon.

I believe, notwithstanding, that this work would have several

desirable results. It could scarce fail to develope and improve

highly the artists employed on it, who, unless this or other

similar works be commanded, must continue the expectants of

private patronage or caprice ; and, as such, too often accept

tasks calculated rather to belittle than to expand and develope

9*

186 The Cooper Monument.

their faculties. In art, swimming is only learned in the
water.

I believe that, as a type of structure, this work could scarce
fail to influence, in the most wholesome manner, the structures
of the country, by showing in practice what a few sound and
pure maxims will do for any building.

I feel confident that, as a homage to a man who has been a
great national benefactor and a literary hero, it would command
the respect of all beholders. By degrees the public would
learn to understand its language, and when that has been
accomplished a great step will have been taken in this branch
of culture.

I have stated my views in regard to this monument in a
general manner ; to go farther into detail it would be necessary
to have elaborated the design, and to have performed all but
the material execution thereof: a labor of many months, and
requiring somewhat of expense in experiment.

I cannot close without expressing my regret that a building
has not already been prepared, and does not already preserve
a public testimonial to other illustrious sons of New York, to
which this monument of Cooper would have been a noble
addition. I believe that, since the fire which destroyed the old
Exchange and annihilated the statue of Hamilton, nothing wor-
thy of the State or the man remains to record visibly his fame.
Fulton's statue, or even bust, if it exist, has not been seen by
me. The fate of the statue of Hamilton, that of Washington's
statue at Raleigh, the destruction of the library at Washington

The Cooper Monument. 187

of the Academy of Fine Arts of Philadelphia, of the antiquities
of Central America at New York, and the burning of the Pano-
rama of Athens at Cambridge, are all examples of our habitual
reliance upon combustible material, against all principles of true
and wise economy, and warnings not to be slighted in the face
of the statistics of conflagration, and the new, saddening ele-
ment of voluntary and malicious incendiarism now beginning
to be developed in these States.

I am fully aware that the great calls made upon the means
of citizens by amusements of an expensive character, by feasts
and dances that vie with the royal follies of the old world, and
embellishments, domestic and personal, which, like the triumphs
of Rome, represent the achievements and the whims of the
known world, leave but scanty resources available for purposes
like that I propose ; but I have still thought it best to speak of
what might be, believing that such an object would be a deco-
ration of the city, a stimulus to youth, a subject of pleasing study
and instruction for the leisure of the citizens, and as permanent
and connected with the national glory, a commencement of that
fund of artistic wealth by which we measure the minds of
nations whose conquests are passed, and whose policy has
suffered the fate of all things here below.

FASHION

Fashion has lived too long, and exercised an influence too
potent for us either to deny or to escape it. I wish to analyse
it briefly. The fact that it runs counter to functional require-
ment oft-tirnes ; that it is imperative for its hour, and that it
loses all claim even to respect or gratitude after that hour is
* passed, brings it into the same category with certain British
Sovereigns, who are stamped as the first gentlemen and ladies
of Christendom, as long as they sit upon the throne, and who
are found, by subsequent analysis, to require a new definition
of decency or propriety to bring them within the class of
reputable men.

I regard the Fashion as the instinctive effort of the stationary
to pass itself off for progress : its embellishment exhibits the
rhythm of organization, without the capacity for action ; so
the fashion boasts the sensuous phenomena of progress with-
out any real advance. The one and the other are, I believe,
opiates, intended to quell and lull the wholesome demands of
nature, and of the author of nature. I believe both are better
than nothing ; for a false homage to the good has more of
hope in it than a conscious and hearty adherence to wrong.

Fashion. 189

Wherever the student of modern life turns his eye, he sees,
among other apparently more substantial and serious obstacles
to advancement and reform, a phantom-like opponent who,
though no man may say whence he comes, or who is his sire,
assumes the purple, and rules with a rod of iron. I mean the
Fashion. I mean the essential mode ! I do not mean to re-
flect upon the victims and subjects of this despot. I believe
we all bow the neck to him, more or less ; nor do I mean to
assert that he has no right of any sort to our regard, for he
has might, and might always means something very serious.
I wish to put him to the test of analysis, and find an intelligible
definition of him, that I may know at least where and how far
we may lazily submit, when and how we may rebel with a
chance of freedom.

The Fashion is not coeval with the race — he was not a
younger brother of the sun and stars, a second-born of Heaven.
The great civilizations of antiquity never saw him, till the
epoch of their decline. The Iliad and the Greek tragedies
have no trace of him. Even the modern man, in his hour of
travail and of woe, wots not of him ; he is a flutterer in the
sunshine of superfluity. He is protean, elusive, he is here and
gone ; and when we had believed him dead, is here again in
the twinkling of an eye ! We had hoped that his change was
a search after the good, until we felt that he gloried in the no
logic of his shifting. We had hoped that he was seeking a
wise folly, and that when the circle of folly was run, he

190 Fashion.

would turn to wisdom in despair. But again and again he
flies to the old folly, and gilds with his sanction the exploded
silliness of a few years since.

The Fashion is no respecter of persons. He has apparently
no preferences of a distinct and reliable nature. He gives no
premonitory symptoms of his approach. He expires in full
vigor, and like Tadur, reappears in the form of some other
impotent, dumb, and voiceless form.

His essential characteristic is change ; he is a dodger, an
ever new countersign, a Bramah lock, which, when Mr. Hobbs
has made his key, instantly becomes a common padlock, and
so puts him to shame.

I understand by the Fashion the instinctive effort of preten-
sion to give by mere change, the sensuous semblance of pro-
gress. I look upon it as a pis alter of the stationary to pass
itself off for locomotion. I regard it as a uniform, with which
thinking humanity cripples its gait, in the vain hope that the
unthinking may keep up with itself. It is a result of the
desperate effort to make a distinction out of nothing, and is
only driven from change to change, because nothing is a fruit
that grows within the reach of all.

Still, Fashion denotes a hope of better things. It betrays a
lurking want not clearly expressed, and it gives stones and
serpents to stop our craving, only because it has neither bread
nor fishes to bestow. Fashion is no positive evil, and has been
often a relative good. As etiquette, though a poor make-shift,

Fashion. 191

still confesses the existence of propriety, its superstition, with
all its darkness, would prove a twilight to the godless ; so
Fashion may be allowed to protest against finality, and be the
symbol of yearning yet impotent aspiration.

AN ARTIST'S CREED.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his very able and scholar-like Dis-
courses on the Art of Painting, adhered to " sound believing,"
and though in his work-room he was chiefly occupied with
lords and ladies, at two, three, and five hundred pounds a head,
yet in his doctrine was he a firm maintainer of the gusto grande,
and its concomitant short-commons. He thus served the god
of art and the mammon of society alternately — led Barrys and
Haydons into the temptation of " entusimusy," and kept his
royal siege and extensive custom safe alike from rivalry and
neglect.

He has recorded the boast that his were no " unfledged
opinions," he had gained them all from the Italian eagles' moun-
tain home, after they had left the parent nest. Was he not in
error here ? Were they not chiefly eggs which he distributed
at Somerset house ? Were not most of the male eggs addled ?

The master-pieces that I saw in London last summer, were
dogs, with an epigraph more or less witty or far-fetched, the
Houses of Parliament, a sort of parvenu nightmare, caused by
the middle ages not being yet thoroughly digested by the British

An Artist's Creed. 193

stomach, and an unsightly column, with an unsightly statue on
its summit, which made me feel that one man, at least, had
failed " to do his duty."

I doubt if the world can accept these spolia oinma as any
fair remuneration for so many years of successful sway by sea
and land.

I wish to give forth an artist's creed which I have prepared
for my own child. I have followed Winkelman through the
labyrinth of his dogma, and it has seemed to me that he hath
rather imposed his own feeling and taste than struck and laid
bare the foundations of truth. I have followed Schiller and
Goethe to the top of their high mountain, and found the air
thin and cold, and often so foggy that I could see no trace of
the kingdoms of the world they told me were at my feet.

I dare not deny the mastery of these men of the ideas they
handled. I must, however, make shift to get along without
understanding them at present. I have not the antecedent
training necessary to follow them, and find my way back to
practice. I remark, likewise, that the light of their sun hath
not prevented many princes and peoples from running into pal-
pable artistical absurdity, and this is my only safe reason for
doubting them. An isolated spider throws out a web and pulls
upon it to see if its other end hath caught somewhat ; if it be
floating in space he withdraws it, and throws out, another much
longer : if he have no better success than before, he waits a long
time after withdrawing this second web, and then throwing out
a thread of incredible fineness and length, he runs upon it, not

194 An Artist's Creed.

caring whether it have any hold at the other end, and trusting
to its hold upon the air, to take him at all events out of that.
I believe the symmetrical and brilliant theories which are not
incarnate in practical result, have a certain analogy with this
third web of the isolated spider; for though it require an ex-
ceptional brain to demonstrate a new truth, your average man
can generally adapt it, and work it into the result with heat and
vigor and even new application* not foreseen by the original
discerner thereof.

I sat in the fresh morning within my garden ; the sun was
rising, and the sea and sky responded to his eternal smile. A
gentle wind crept over me, and wrapped me in a paradise of new-
mown hay and wild flowers. The sweetbrier that canopied
ray head poured forth her breath of praise till the sense ached
at her. I was still and cheerful. Suddenly my own blue-eyed
boy stood by me ; he leaned his elbows on my knees, looked
wistfully up to my face, and, with bewildered smile asked, " Papa,
what is God ? Since " the boy's the father of the man," I com-
manded my voice and my smile ; 1 bade him call his mother

* Some of the ablest Daguerrian operators are, without doubt, the very
men who would have laughed Daguerre to scorn had they seen him trying
to fix the image upon his silver retina. You may know the practicians
by this sign, they are great laughers. They stand in relation to the
inventors where the fist stands in relation to the brain, and are as
necessary to it as it to them.

An Artist's Creed. 195

that we might speak together of this ; he bounded away.
My breast was shaken, and I wept. That question, thus asked
then and there, was too much for me. It was as if the new-
born litter had lifted their mewling muzzles from the teat, and
yelped for the day that was burning on their closed lids.

Ere long I heard his laughing voice ; he was at play ; I went
to him. " Papa. God is my father which is in heaven !" " Ay, my
child ! 'hallowed be his name!' "I say it every night — Thy
kingdom come ! thy will be done !" and, leaning on his Lilli-
putian rake, he recited the divine petition. Is it right thus to
make the infant brain a romba of words that come, at last, to be
associated only with bed-time ? I know not there be honest
men that were thus tutored. Because of my fear that my
child may come at last not to taste the quality of the Lord's
prayer, until he can compare it with the prayers of the hier-
archies, do I now seek to prepare for him an artist's creed, that
he may learn somewhat of man made in God's image, and
thence climb from nature to nature's author and finisher.

Three things, my child, have I seen in man worthy of thy
love and thought. Three proofs do I find in man that he was
made only a little lower than the angels — Beauty — Action —
Character.

By beauty I mean the promise of function.
By action I mean the presence of function.
By character I mean the record of function.

196 An Artist's Creed.

The glory of beauty is the faith of future action.

The honor of action is the hope of future character.

The divinity of character is the charity that giveth itself to
God, in sacrificing self to humanity.

These three do I find, and the greatest of these is charity.
Go thou, my child, into the thoroughfare, test these my words,
and if they be clever statements of a lie, say to them retro,
Satane ! But if they be feeble lines of truth, come to me
once more, and we will pull these threads and seek to know
where their other end is fastened.

The April leaf bursts its integument at the call of the coming
sun. Its stem is feeble, but its pulp is also tender, obedient to
the breeze, coy of the rain, it shines and thinks not of August,
still less of November. The eye of man sees here the beauty
of the leaf, the promise of midsummer function; not that func-
tion hath not begun — it began ere the sharded husk fell to
earth. But it is light, easy gentle work. He hangs upon the
breast of the young year, and answers the flow of her milk
with the light of his eye, and his heavenly, toothless laugh.
The eye of man foresees the dog-days and hears afar the hail-
storm and the thunder. Not for ever will that mother watch —
she only prepares thee !

In July we visit once more the leaf, and we find him a lit-
tle dusty generally, his stem tougher, he sways where he once
fluttered, and his gloss is gone ; he takes his dose of sun and
rain when he can get it, but not with the frolic of May ; his
outline hath been somewhat shrivelled by the heat, his integrity

An Artist's Creed. 197

a little damaged by grub, or moth. In the long drought we
think we hear him cry, u How long ! Oh Lord, how long ?" He
is now in full action, and though he seem less buoyant, this is
his life of life. There is still beauty in him, for there is still a
promise of function, but there is chiefly action, performance,
which is more than promise. Character is now developing,
the record of his function is now seen, he is beginning to get a
receipt in full from the Maker of all things.

The eye of man now sees, in the expanded and towering
trunk, the treasure, that these little busy ones have laid up of
solid wood.

In November we seek the leaf once more — it hangs by a
filament ; beauty is there yet, for yet is there a promise of func-
tion ; but how small ! The thready fibre that sustains the
shrivelled lung still promises, the filament still acts, character
is here ; and at last, with sudden puff of north-wester, comes the
receipt in full, and the rustling fall is answered with greeting
rustle by such as fell before.

The ear of man hears audibly the words " Well done ! good
and faithful servant."

The heathen saw in spring one deity, in the summer another,
in the fall another ; and when the winter came they sorrowed
as without hope. The eye of man now sees one God, the God
of spring, of summer, of fall and of winter, and in whom,
through all these aspects, is there no shadow of turning.

Thou who dost not grope as I, but seest ; who art not dumb
as I, who have dabbled in jargons till I have lost my vernacu-

198 An Artist's Creed.

lar and gained no tongue, — but speakest; say of man, say of
nations, say of creeds, say of every juxtaposition of parts for
an end what I have tried to say of the leaf, what thou feelest
that I struggle after, even as the drowning man clutches, vain-
ly ; and if it be not true, there must be more Gods than one.

FRAGMENTS.

The man of genius is pre-eminently the servant of a God whose
service is perfect freedom. The so called terror — the delirium
tremens of responsibility belongs, I believe, rather to what is
called talent, especially when conjoined with a fierce desire to
parvenir, as the French say, — to succeed.

Your man of genius goes about looking for responsibility ;
and when he finds it, he takes it joyfully, often telling you,
somewhat frankly, that he is the man for it, and forgetting, in
the fervor of his volition, that modesty which the copy-books
have conjoined inseparably with merit. He not only promises
largely, magnificently, but he tells you that his performance is
not to be despised — Exegi monumentum cere perennius ! Rega-
lique situ pyramidum altius. That's the way he talks when
he is communicative and in good humor with himself.

I believe it is Ovid who shows his conviction of the immor-
tality of the soul, by loudly defying old " tempus edax rerum"
to strike one leaf from his laurelled brow.

Dante says, that he writes from a harmony that is suona dentro

200 Fragments.

— inside of him. He accuses no terrible pressure from without,
except political tyranny and want of bread. Ealtrui 'pane —
eating the crust of charity — that is his complaint. Shak-
speare's " eye in a fine frenzy rolling," rolled from the fulness
of the God within, not from fear of outward lash or black

mark.

I am afraid that some of our critics, with their stern claims
and terrible law, have swallowed more of the east wind than
is good for the liver. They may do harm with this reign of
terror. Boys of genius are sprouting in every direction, by all
accounts. Why scare them in this way ?

Look at Robert Burns ! When he brought forward his little
specimens of the utterance of genius, the dominant intellect of
Britain said, " It is naught !" So they set him to gauge whis-
key ; yet, when he had gone his way, " straightway they
rejoiced," built him a huge monument, and bemoaned him.
So far from making any stern claim upon this mind, now
known as the very jewel of Scotland, the dunderheads never
found out what he was good for until he was gone. Burns
hankered and cankered — he confessed it — but it was not for
fear of not getting utterance: it was, he says, "to see their
cursed pride." They made stern claims of some kind or other,
and he protested against them. There is little doubt that the
man saw in the distance the big marble monument that was
to shelter his image. He would gladly have exchanged some
tithe of its future outlay and splendor, and have received there-

Fragments. 201

for a cottage for bis wife and bread for bis bairns. Wbat ter-
ror inspired bis song ? If I mistake not, be says, roundly, " I
rhyme for fun."

I believe it is now settled, that to interlard one's talk or
written language with French phrases and scraps of Latin or
other foreign tongues, is essentially vulgar and affected — still
I have not tried to break myself of it, partly because I am one
of those men who do not easily learn new habits, and partly to
repel— shake off — and trip up the self-made critics, who are my
especial aversion. When I say self-made, I do not mean such
men as having perceived that there were " more things in heaven
than on earth," &c, have seriously set themselves to supply
the deficiency. I mean the truly self-made man, who is not
only ignorant, but is cheerfully so, who has kept constantly
within that narrow circle where the accident of birth placed
him, and where strong lungs and an iron stomach have made
him the cock of the walk. I have generally found that this
sort of man, in making himself, never forgets the important
item of self-appreciation — nay, it is often the only part of the
2:od-like task that does not seem to me to have been hurried,
botched, and made a mess of. . I had hoped to have increased
these citations in number and value, with assistance of the Con-
gressional library, but that, alas ! is gone, having been quite
burned up, in consequence of the economy that filled its halls

with some forty or fifty cords of painted pine, and that too, in

10

202 Fragments.

a building where the soda-water merchants and applewomen
have royal vaults, over head and under foot, and where even
the crypts and outhouses are worthy of Genoa, Venice, or
Rome.

Stopping here and there, among men of different races,
creeds, and forms of civilization, I have become inoculated, to
some extent, with the various ways of thinking of those about
me, always retaining nearly the same proportion of original
Yankee conviction to after-thought, that you will find of matrix
to pebbles in the pudding-stone of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

The habit of working in stone has spoiled me for debate. I
never can discuss with a vigorous and resolute antagonist.
When I work a bit of clay it will, to a certain extent, stay put,
as the saying is. Stone also is, after all, a soft material. If I
strike off a bit with my chisel, it stays off through all time ;
but when I answer an objection in politics or morals, the rogues
state it over again in another shape and grow personal — just
as the wolf, when he tried the lamb at the brook-side assizes,
kept making new indictments and drawing nearer to him all
the while.

This impossibility of getting the better of a disputant is the
real secret, I take it, of the ultima ratio of fire, sword, and tor-
ture. Hercules cut off the Hvdra's heads, but he was obliged
to burn the stumps to prevent their sprouting, and all opinion

Fragments. 203

is a Hydra's head. Uniformity of creed is only to be realized
by mechanical means. If you would have men's faith as relia-
ble as stone you must petrify them. But when they be of
stone, other men may throw them at you (see the history of
the French Revolution). Perhaps it is wiser to agree to differ,
and to set up our men in society as the shipwrights do their
masts, with somewhat of space and play, lest they snap and
come down about our ears if put to too strong a test. Shrouds
and stays are good, but neither sun- nor rain respects them.
What is all right and tight to-day will be rickety to morrow !

Serpens nisi Seiyentem comedit non Jit Draco. — The brutes
in their w r ar, as in their truce, obey a divine law. Men also
obey a divine law in their war with brutes, as in their truce.
Now the hierarchies and higher- law men declare that another
God is necessary to explain the battle between man and man.
To this I would answer, that men do not fight about arithmeti-
cal questions; they do not fight about that which both under-
stand. When men fight, therefore, one of the belligerents at
least is brutal, perhaps both ; in either case there is a brutal
belligerent. I see no necessity for inventing a new God to pre-
side over brutal men ; for, though man may manage to be
thierischer als jedes their, he can scarce surpass them all.
Let us then paraphrase the Horatian precept and proclaim, —
" Nee Diabolus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit"

204 Fragments.

English writers, even of a high class, speak complacently of
the bull-dog courage of their masses. They parade it in terro-
rem. Now, bull-dogs are terrible to curs and mastiffs, but
when they see men they see their lord.

John Bull, in his Quarterly Review, after bellowing trium-
phantly over the ten carcases of Frenchmen he once " knocked
over" (Sic) with old fashioned smooth-bore, and saying pithy
things of the capability of the rifle and bayonet, squeals about
the cruel invention of a French officer for throwing into his
ships a flame inevitable and inextinguishable. Doth he
think it diabolical ? Let him pray ! Perhaps the Frenchman
thought his bull-dogs diabolical, and has prayed first.

At Vienna, I heard an Austrian say, boastingly, that in the
next war with France, the imperial troops would be found to be
a wall of granite. A Yankee who stood there, said, quietly,
"The imperial troops, sir, were always such a wall; it will
never be an impassable barrier to Frenchmen unless you
garnish it with — men."

Perhaps the old symbol of the serpent with his tail in his
mouth, means man seeking self-knowledge after having subju-
gated sea and land ; if so, perhaps a better type of eternity
could not have been invented. I thank the prophetic seers of

Fragments. 205

Egypt that they made the circle by putting the tail between
the teeth ; by this arrangement, the brain overlooks the fun
from two eyes. The circle is sometimes sought by giving the
tail a double turn round the neck ; thanks to God ! the tail
loses its power when the brain is isolated by the hug.

When Jove made the anaconda's head, he saw the eyes
fixed upon a bullock, and asked, "Dost thou wish a tail?"
" Yea, papa, a big one." " Dost thou wish a fine pair of legs ?"
" No, papa, they would only be in my way ; why askest thou ?"
" Merely to test thy head, my boy. Behold, thou art
finished!" "Alas, I am small." "3ut unencumbered." "I
am very huno-rv." " Go ahead !"

Jove humored the ambition of the hog, and made him a
monumental elephant. The hypercritical quadruped surveyed
himself in a pool, and came back shaking his ears in much dis-
gust. " How now, thou ponderous one ?" " Pater andronte
theonte ! Did I not ask for dignity, that I might stand a
monument of thy own greatness and wisdom ? Behold, thou
hast given me two tails instead of one, and I am a laughing-
stock !" " My child," said the pitying God, " this is no common
tail, but a marvellous proboscis ! Why let it hang thus pendu-
lous and forlorn ? Throw it aloft ! Hold it vertical and rigid !
Blow ! Behold, thou hast a spire and belfry all in one !"

2t>6 Fragments.

"Truly thou art great, my father; I will sing thy praises ever-
more." The elephant now repaired to the hill-top, took his
stand, and tossing his snout into the sky, commenced his hymn
to Jove. He was the glory and wonder of all hogdom. When
hunger came, between strophe and antistrophe, he managed to
trumpet for dinner. "My child," said Jove with laughter, "I
cannot afford so much one-sided magnificence. Thy nose must
come down and attend upon thy belly. Behold, thou standest
in thine own ordure ! Such a monument as thou requires two
tails; the one to strike the flies from thy flank, the other to
purvey for thy maw. Thou shalt find it supple as a snake ;
prehensile as monkey's hand. Fall not, my son, into mono-
mania. So much grandeur and immobility can only exist by a
mobile, flexible, sensitive jack-of-all-trades adjunct. Know that
thy snout is my master-piece. The rest of thee I made to
please thy foolish self; but for this snout thy dignity would
soon starve."

The Egyptian immortality lost in flavor and color what it
gained in duration. Their architecture was as expressive of
impotent aspiration as their mummy. They exemplify with
their conserved carcases and perennial clumsiness, that fear of
death which, mistrusting God or believing in more than one, is
all its lifetime subject to bondage.

The Egyptians sought immortality by passing their lives in

Fragments. 207

hewing- stone cases for their carcases, not altogether in vain,
for after three thousand years, the faithful granite yields us the
eternal grin. The Greeks put their bodies in the fire ; and
their lives upon papyrus or marble, where it still breathes and
glows.

There be dilettanti who think that art can utter no more,
because they have not heard aright one word of all that art
hath uttered. If any man studying books at night, conclude
that the day of poetry is past, let him rise before the sun and
see the day born, and he will feel with joy that God still
liveth.

Having lived all my life in lands where people looked over
their shoulders before asking what's o'clock, for fear that they
might wake the suspicion of a spy, and having, from time to
time, read books published here at home, in which it seemed
to me that speech took a high, wide, and deep range, going
indeed so far as to call in question the constitution of these
States, and the creed of a majority of our fellow-citizens, I pro-
mised myself the satisfaction of blowing off the steam accumu-
lated by years of malcontent silence, without let or hindrance.
I felt all the safer in this my proposed talk, because I am a sin-
cere and hearty adherent to the distinctive political opinions of
my country; and though I cannot, of course, think on matters

208 Fragments.

of faith like everybody, I allow that in all such matters " much
may be said on both sides."

The real, hidden, not outspoken meaning of these checks
upon the freedom of speech, would seem to be a regret that he
who uses it, hath ever been born, or, being born and developed,
that he doth not make sufficient haste to die.

Whoever will compare the remarks made upon Fenimore
Cooper, during his life and after his demise, both at home and
abroad, will scarce escape the conclusion that when laid in his
coffin and screwed down, he was just where many wished to
have him. Had he followed the prudential advice of some
well-wishers, his admirers would have been merely less grieved,
his foes less gratified, when he at length put on that extreme
quietness of manner which the English preach, and whose
glory is that from it there is nothing to hope or to fear. To
assume this quietness in life, would for him have been suicide
— for "quiet to quick bosoms is a hell."

I understand by this continual order to keep one's feet close
together, one's elbows close to the side, and one's voice below
the breath, simply a denial of the right to live. Surely, there is
yet room enough on this continent for an individual to walk
and talk, and even to shout and run, without breaking any
one's rest or endangering public rights.

The main advantage of intercourse and society has always
appeared to me to consist herein, that by uttering one's thought,
feeling, whim if you will, one could show his hand, and obtain
perhaps sympathy, perhaps instruction, or peradventure the

Fragments. 209

knowledge that neither was to be hoped for. In Europe we talk
much about the opera, the fashion, the weather, and the deli-
cacies of the season. We talk of topics which unite as many as
possible of a mixed company, and which expose no one to the
attention of the police. In such societies, to broach political sub-
jects, to speak of creeds, or to mention Washington, would be
a breach of manners ; because these are not safe topics. Some
of the best bred and most refined circles in Europe use all this
caution. Let no one fancy, however, that he can win his entree
into such company by tattle about music, and gastronomy.
He gets no entrance there without having been tested and
stamped elsewhere.

I regard it as no more than common honesty in an individual
who enters any society, that he speak his thought and feeling,
lest he be called to join a procession to glorify a cause he
despises, or to eat abolition bread and salt, with a secret south-
ern leaning.

The great charm of a hospitable entertainment and friendly
greeting lies herein, that they be extended to ourselves, by
which I mean, because of our special ism, or in spite of it. If
I keep back my opinion, and get invited to dine thereby, is it
not a trick that I play upon Abraham ? Besides, how can I
be sure that the warmth and friction of talk will not rouse the
voice of Jacob, and so give the lie to the hide of Esau ? Now, the
meanest attitude conceivable by me, is that of one who stands
convicted of the desire to cheat, and of the impotence to deceive.

10*

210 F It A G M £ In T S .

I write my opinions more willingly than I speak tliem ;
because, being many of them not strictly demonstrable, they
tend to rouse the individual feeling of him who uttereth them.
Mathematical and physical truths are proven, explained, and
developed by a tide of talk which, like a placid sea, rolls its
deep waters gently but irresistibly shorewards. Moral, political,
and economical truths are defended by language which, like
the roller of the beach, meeting resistance from below, gets up
with sudden vivacity, and combs and breaks with foam and
roar. A man is never so well prepared to do justice to Euclid
as in the morning, and with empty stomach; he talks politics
and religion with vigor, when the ladies are withdrawn and
the cloth is removed.

It is often necessary to try one's opinions on several hearers,
in order to see what sort of interests and aspirations are
offended by them. I should be ashamed to utter twice what
were once condemned by good men and true of opposite poli-
tics and different creeds ; but a one-sided condemnation hath
no terrors for me.

There is a form of speech which aspires, by breadth of sym-
pathy, to live peaceably with all men. In certain states of
society, this temper is ornamental and useful ; but if perse-
vered in through thick and thin, it is apt to incur the charge
of a fondness for the " mess," and an aversion for the " watch."

I have always heard Thorwaldsen, Eastlake, Gerard, De la

Frag m Ens. 211

Roche, Gibson, Rauch, Teneranni, Bienaime, speak with a cer-
tain reserve and caution of a new work by an able hand.
They seem to have an instinctive sense that new works, though
they be works of a Dante or a Shakspeare, do not always find
their level with the " ignorant present ;" they get it often when,
as Lord Bacon says, "some time be passed away." Even when
sure that a " miss" has been made, they beget a softness that
doth give a smoothness to their sorrow. "When Dante speaks
of Homer as the poet, " che sovra ogni altro come aquila vola"
one would suppose that he had no room for other idols, yet in
the presence of Virgil's moonlight beauty doth he kneel out-
right, call him his " master," and say that from his golden
page came the fair style that shed honor on his own Tuscan
town. Lo ! he hath found another eagle ! This is not exactly
Shylock justice, or New England logic perhaps, but it is true
to the heart of man nevertheless.

Fra Beato Angelico was unknown and unappreciated by
whole schools of able modem painters. Read all that Eng-
lishmen have written on art, up to Flaxman's time, and you
will find no trace of his deathless fame. Read all that French
criticism has uttered (and French criticism is not to be
despised), and you will see that Fra Beato's paradise is to them
a terra incognita. Read the shallow babble about the hard-
ness of Perugino in the old English works. It is wrong to be
so fast in our verdicts.

212 Fragments.

Genius would seem to make immense efforts almost uncon-
sciously, and to keep a large reserve out of the figlit altogether.
Shakspeare went into the country and remained still. He has
told us that he knew his name would have a life where life is
most active, " even in the mouths of men." Lord Bacon, too,
pointed out his future station in the world's opinion, adding,
mournfully, that it must be withheld " until some time be
passed away." This disposition on the part of mediocrity to
harry, and scourge, and flout men of creative power, looks more
like the result, of a terrible law than anything else in the annals
of genius. Still, it is too general not to be an ordinance of
God. Like loves like, and it requires the collective heart of
man to make a quorum to judge the broad, the deep, the
genial soul. The man of vast power of mind is like the for-
tress full of armed hosts, with spears glittering over the turret,
with pointed artillery and burning match. We sit down to
sketch it and glorify it more cordially, when the portcullis
chain is broken, the guns are spiked, and the ivy and the owl
have possession of its towers.

TRIBUTES.

GREENOUGH'S

STATUE OF WASHINGTON.

BY THE LATE HON. ALEXANDER H. EVERETT.

Greenough's great work has surpassed my expectations, high
as they were. It is truly sublime. The statue is of colossal
grandeur ; about twice the size of life. The hero is represented
in a sitting posture. A loose drapery covers the lower part of
the figure, and is carried up over the right arm, which is
extended, with the elbow bent, and the forefinger of the hand
pointed upwards. The left arm is stretched out a little above
the thigh ; and the hand holds a Roman sword reversed. The
design of the artist was, of course, to indicate the ascendency
of the civic and humane over the military virtues, which dis-
tinguished the whole career of Washington, and which form
the great glory of his character. It was not intended to bring
before the eye the precise circumstance under which he resigned
his commission as commander-in-chief. This would have
required a standing posture and a modern military costume ;
and, without an accompanying group of members of Congress,
would have been an incomplete work. The sword reversed.

216 Statue of Washington.

and the finger pointed upwards, indicate the moral sentiment,
of which the resignation of his commission, as commander-in-
chief, was the strongest evidence, without the details, which
were inconsistent with the general plan. The face is that of
Stuart's portraits modified so as to exhibit the highest point of
manly vigor and maturity. Though not corresponding exactlv
with any of the existing portraits, it is one of the aspects which
the countenance of Washington must necessarily have worn in
the course of his progress through life, and is obviously the
proper one for-.^he purpose. In expression, the countenance is
admirably adjusted to the character of the subject and the
intention of the work. It is stamped with dignity, and radiant
with benevolence and moral beauty. The execution is finished
to the extreme point of perfection, as well in the accessories as
in the statue itself. The seat is a massy arm-chair, of antique
form and large dimensions, the sides of which are covered with
exquisitely wrought bas-reliefs. The subject of one is the infant
Hercules strangling the serpent in his cradle; that of the
other, Apollo guiding the four steeds that draw the chariot of
the sun. The back of the chair is of open work. At the left
corner is placed a small statue of Columbus, holding in his
hand a sphere, which he is examining with fixed attention : at
the right corner is a similar small statue of an Indian chief.
The effect of these comparatively diminutive images is to
heighten by contrast the impression of grandeur, which is made
by the principal figure. The work stands upon a square block
of granite, which bears upon its front and two sides, as an

Statue of Washington. 217

inscription, the well known language of tlic resolution, adopted
in Congress upon the receipt of the intelligence of Washing-
ton's death : " First in war : first in peace : first in the hearts
of his countrymen." On the back of the statue, just above the
top of the chair, is placed another inscription in Latin, which is

as follows :

Simulacrum istud

Ad magnum Libertatis exemplum

]N"ec sine ipsa duratnrmn

Horatius Greonongh

Faeiebat.

This inscription is not very felicitous. Independently of the
objections that have been made to the grammar of the faeiebat,
which, though defended on classical authority, does not strike
me as the natural form, the ideas are hardly expressed with
sufficient distinctness, and, so for as they can be gathered, are
not particularly appropriate. It is not easy to see in what pre-
cise or correct understanding of the terms Washington can be
called an " example of liberty ;" and admitting that, by a rather
latitudinous construction, this phrase may be supposed to mean
that his conduct is a proper example for the imitation of the
friends of liberty, it is still more difficult to imagine why a
statue of Washington may not be preserved though liberty
should perish. Two thousand years have elapsed since the fall
of Grecian and Roman libertv, but Demosthenes and Cicero
still survive in their "all but living busts," as well as in their
" thoughts that breathe and words that burn." The precise

218 Statue of Washington.

object of this description would, perhaps, have been sufficiently
provided for by a simple indication of the name of the sculptor
and of the circumstances under which the work was ordered
and executed. The statue was originally placed in the Rotunda
of the Capitol ; but the light being found unfavorable, it was
removed to a temporary building in the garden, where it now
stands. The light is better than before, but the meanness of
the building forms an unpleasant contrast with the grandeur of
the work, and it is much to be desired that a more suitable
place of deposit may soon be found for a monument so worthy
of the great subject, and so honorable to the artist and the
countrv.

This magnificent product of genius does not seem to be
appreciated at its full value in this metropolis of " the freest
and most enlightened people on the globe." I have met with
few persons here who have spoken of it in terms of strong or
even moderate satisfaction. Every one has some fault to point
out, that appears to withdraw his attention entirely from the
grandeur and beauty of the whole, which, when they are
pressed upon him, he is compelled to acknowledge. One is
dissatisfied that the figure is colossal ; another that the face is
not an exact copy of Stuart's portrait ; a third, that the posture
is sitting and not standing; a fourth, that there is a want of
repose in the general expression ; a fifth, that one of the ankles
is incorrectly modelled ; and so of the rest. Most of these
objections proceed, as I have heard them stated, from persons
who would think themselves wronged if their sensibility to the

Statue of Washington. 219

grand and beautiful in nature and art were called in question.
But how feeble must this quality be in one who can see nothing
in so splendid a monument but some trilling real or imaginary
fault! I should not blame any one for indicating and insisting
on what he might consider as blemishes, if he were also to
exhibit a proper feeling for the acknowledged merits of the
work : but I almost lose patience when I hear a person, not
without some pretensions to good taste, after a visit of an hour
to the statue, making no other remark than that one of the
ankles is incorrectly modelled ; an error which, after a careful
examination for the express purpose, I have been wholly unable
to discover. This remark is nearly a repetition of the one made
by the Athenian cobbler, upon the first exhibition of one of the
celebrated Venuses of antiquity — that there was a wrong stitch
in one of her sandals. It affords a curious, though not very
agreeable proof, how exactly human nature repeats itself under
similar circumstances, even to the slightest and apparently most
accidental particulars.

The most satisfactory expression of feeling that I have met
with here, in regard to the statue, was prompted by the finer
and truer sensibility inherent in the heart of woman. It pro-
ceeded from a company of ladies whom I happened to encoun-
ter on my first visit to the building that contains this great
national monument. They were strangers to me, and had not
the air of persons belonging to the fashionable coteries of our
large cities ; but they evidently possessed — what is much more
important — cultivated minds, and a keen susceptibility to the

220 Statue of Washington.

influence of natural and moral beauty. They appeared to have
been travelling extensively, and one of them had under her
arm a large sketch-book. They expressed in various forms the
highest admiration of the statue, and one of them finally
remarked, as a sort of summary of the whole, that it produced
upon her mind a stronger impression of sublimity and grandeur
than she had received from the cataract of Niagara.

The objections above mentioned to the size, attitude, and
costume of the statue, and to the character of the features, pro-
ceed upon the supposition, that it was the interest of the artist
to make the nearest possible approach to the person and coun-
tenance of Washington, as represented in the most authentic
portraits and statues ; and in costume, to the dress that he actu-
ally wore. This supposition is obviously an erroneous one.
These are matters which have their importance as points of
historical information — especially in connexion with a character
of so much interest. But the object of the artist, in a work of
this kind, is much older than that of satisfying curiosity upon
these particulars. It was, as it should have been, his purpose
to call forth, in the highest possible degree, the sentiment of
the moral sublime, which the contemplation of the character of
Washington is fitted to excite. This purpose required such a
representation of his person, for instance, as, consistently with
truth to nature, would tend most strongly to produce this
result. A servile adherence to the existing portraits is not
essential to the accomplishment of such a purpose, and might
even be directly opposed to it ; as, for example, if these had

Statue of Washington. 221

been executed in the early youth or extreme old age of the
subject. Still less would it be necessary to preserve the cos-
tume of the period, which is already out of fashion, and for
every subject, except the satisfaction of antiquarian curiosity,
entirely unsuitable for effect in sculpture. The colossal size —
the antique costume — the more youthful air of the face — are
circumstances which, without materially impairing the truth to
nature, increase very much the moral impression, and, instead
of furnishing grounds for objection, are positive merits of high
importance.

The question betwen a sitting and a standing posture is sub-
stantially the same as whether the subject was to be presented
under a civil or a military aspect. In the latter case, a stand-
ing posture would undoubtedly have been preferable. But if the
ascendency, given by Washington through his whole career to
the virtues of the patriot citizen over the talents of the military
chieftain, was the noblest trait in his character, "and if it was the
duty of the artist to exhibit him, on this occasion, under the
circumstances in which he appeared, in real life, to the greatest
advantage, then the civil aspect of the subject, and with it the
sitting posture, like the other particulars that have been men-
tioned, instead of being a ground of objection, is a high posi-
tive merit.

It has been mentioned in private, as an objection made by a
person whose judgment in some respects would be considered
as entitled to respect, that there is a want of repose in the atti-
tude. The arms are extended in a way in which they could

222 Statue of Washington.

not be placed for any length of time without producing fatigue ;
and we feel, it is said, the same sort of uneasiness on witnessing
this attitude in a statue that we should if it were maintained
permanently by a living person in our presence.

It is rather difficult to comprehend the precise meaning of
this objection as applied to the statue of Washington. When
it is the intention of the artist to express repose, the indications
of activity, of any kind, are, of course, out of place. Where it
is intended to express activity, the indications of repose would,
for the same reason, be incongruous with the subject. It is no
more an objection to the statue of Washington that the arms
are placed in an attitude which, after a short time, would
become fatiguing to a living person, than it is an objection to
the antique group of Laocoon that the muscles of a living man
could not remain more than a few minutes in the state of
extreme tension, indicated in that celebrated work, without
convulsions, or to the Apollo Belvidere, that he stands, with foot
drawn back and arm extended, in the position of an archer
who has just discharged an arrow from his bow. In the
famous equestrian statue of Peter the Great, at St. Petersburg,
the horse is rearing on his hinder legs, while the fore legs
remain suspended in the air at some distance from the ground.
This is an attitude which could not be maintained by a living
horse for more than two or three seconds ; but, far from being
made a ground of objection to the work, it has been regarded
as its greatest merit, and as the precise quality which has given
it the character of being the finest equestrian statue in Europe.

Statue of Washington. 223

It was not the design of the artist to represent his subject in
a state of repose. On the contrary, the obvious intention is to
exhibit the noblest trait in his intellectual and moral character.
I mean his habitual control over all the irregular propensities
of his nature, at the point of time when it reached its fullest
active development. In his practical career, this point was
indicated by the resignation of his commission, as commander-
in-chief, into the hands of the President of Congress. But that
was a scene which comes within the province of painting rather
than sculpture. A group so vast is beyond the reach of the
chisel. It was the difficult duty of the artist to embody the
sentiment which governed the conduct of Washington on that
occasion, in a single figure. His success in conquering this
difficulty, and producing, by a single figure, a moral emotion,
superior, probably, to any that could be called forth by the
finest painting of the scene before Congress, is one of the
noblest triumphs of his noble art. To say that the work
indicates activity and not repose, is only saying, in other words,
that it was executed in conformity to the leading point in a
plan, which was suggested, or rather imperiously dictated, by
the nature of the subject.

It is rather unpleasant to be compelled, in commenting on
this splendid effort of genius, to meet such objections as these,
instead of joining in the general expression of mingled admira-
tion and delight which it ought to elicit from the whole public.
I make no pretensions to connoisseurship in the art of sculp-
ture, and judge of the merit of the work merely by the impres-

224 Statue of Washington.

sion which it makes upon my own mind; but I can say for
myself, that after seeing the most celebrated specimens o
ancient and modern sculpture to be found in Europe, including
the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, with the finest produc-
tions of Canova, Thorwaldsen, Sergell, and Chantry, 1 consider
the Washington of Greenough as superior to any of them, and
as the master-piece of the art. The hint seems to have been
taken from the Olympian Jupiter of Phidias, who said himself
that he had caught the inspiration under which he conceived
the plan of that great glory of ancient sculpture, from a passage
in the Iliad. In this way the noble work of Greenough con-
nects itself, by the legitimate filiation of kindred genius, trans-
mitting its magnetic impulses through the long lines of inter-
vening centuries, with the poetry of Homer. The vast dimen-
sions of the Jupiter of Phidias may have made it to the eye a
more imposing and majestic monument; but if the voluntary
submission of transcendent power to the moral law of duty be,
as it certainly is, a more sublime spectacle than any positive
exercise of the same power over inferior natures, then the sub-
ject of the American sculptor is more truly divine than that of
his illustrious prototype in Greece. When Jupiter shakes
Olympus with his nod, the imagination is affected by a grand
display of energy, but the heart remains untouched. When
Washington, with an empire in his grasp, resigns his sword to
the President of Congress, admiration of his great intellectual
power is mingled with the deepest emotions of delightful sym-
pathy, and we involuntarily exclaim with one of the characters

Statue of Washington. 225

in a scene of much less importance, as depicted by an elegant
female writer : " There spoke the true thing ; now my own
heart is satisfied."

The present location of the statue is, of course, merely provi-
sional. It is much to be regretted that the light in the
Rotunda was found to be unfavorable, as there is no other hall
in any of the buildings belonging to the Union sufficiently lofty
and extensive to become a suitable, permanent place of deposit
for this monument. How, when, and where, such a one shall
be provided is a problem of rather difficult solution. If, as has
sometimes been suggested, the patrimonial estate of Washing-
ton, at Mount Vernon, should ever be purchased by the coun-
try, and a public building erected there to serve as a sort of
National Mausoleum, or Western Westminster Abbey, the
statue would become, of course, its principal ornament. But
the execution of this plan, should it ever be realized, is proba-
bly reserved for the good taste and liberality of some future
generation. In the meanwhile, the noblest achievement of the
art of sculpture, dedicated to the memory of the greatest man
that ever lived in the tide of time, will be permitted by a coun-
try which received from his hands gifts no less precious than
Independence and Liberty, to take up its abode in a paltry
barrack.

11

A VISIT TO GREEiXOUGH'S STUDIO.

[fkom "scenes and thoughts in ecropk."]

Among the studios of living Artists, the most attractive natu-
rally to an American, are those of his fellow countrymen. Nor
do they need national partiality to make them attractive. The
first American who gained a reputation in the severest of
the Fine Arts was Greexough. For some years he was the
only sculptor we had, and worthily did he lead the van in a
field where triumphs awaited us. I happened, five or six
years ago, to travel from Boston southward with him and
Powers, and heard Greenough then warmly second Powers'
inclination, and urge him to hasten to Italy. Powers was
soon followed by Clevenger, who, in turn, received from him
encourao-injy words. The three are now workinc; here harmo-
niously together.

Artists of merit have seldom much to show at their rooms ;
for their works are either made to order, and sent to their des-
tinations as fast as finished, or thev are sold almost as soon
as seen. Sculptors have an advantage over painters, inas-
much as they retain the plaster casts after which each work is
chiselled in marble. As Greenough does not always finish

A Visit to Greenough's Studio. 227

the clay model up to the full design in his mind, hut leaves the
final touches to the chisel itself, he is not forward to exhibit
his casts taken from the clay, the prototypes of the forms that
have been distributed to different quarters of the world. He
has just now in his studio, recently finished in marble for a
Hungarian nobleman, an exquisite figure of a child, seated on
a bank gazing at a butterfly, that has just lighted on the back
of its upraised hand. In the conception there is that union of
simplicity and significance, so requisite to make a work of
plastic Art, especially of sculpture, effective, and which denotes
the genial Artist. The attitude of the figure has the pliable
grace of unconscious childhood; the limbs are nicely wrought;
and the intelligence, curiosity, delight, implied and expressed,
in its gaze at the beautiful little winged wonder before it,
impart vividly to the work the moral element ; wanting the
which, a production, otherwise commendable, is not lifted up
to one of the high platforms of Art. The mind of the specta-
tor is drawn into that of the beautiful child, whose inmost
faculties are visibly budding in the effort to take in the phe-
nomenon before it. The perfect bodily stillness of the little
flexible figure, under the control of its mental intentness, is
denoted by the coming forth of a lizard from the side of the
bank. This is one of those delicate touches whereby the artist
knows how to beautify and heighten the chief effect.

Another work of high character, which Greenough is just
about to finish in marble, is a head of Lucifer, of colossal
size. The countenance has the beauty of an archangel, with the

228 A Visit to Greenough's Studio.

hard, uncertain look of an archangel fallen. Here is a noble
mould not filled up with the expression commensurate to it.
There is no exaggeration to impress the beholder at once with
the malevolence of the original which the sculptor had in his
imagination. The sinister nature lies concealed, as it were, in
the features, and comes out gradually, after they have been
some time contemplated. The beauty of the countenance is
not yet blasted by the deformity of the mind.

Greenough's Washington had left Italy before my arrival in
Florence. By those best qualified to judge, it was here
esteemed a fine work. Let me say a few words about the
nudity of this statue, for which it has been much censured in
America.

Washington exemplifies the might of principle. He was a
great man without ambition, and the absence of ambition was
a chief source of his greatness. The grandeur of his character
is infinitely amplified by its abstract quality ; that is, by its
cleanness from all personality. Patriotism, resting on inte-
grity of soul and broad massive intellect, is in him uniquely
embodied. The purity and elevation of his nature were the
basis of his success. Had his rare military and civil genius
been united to the selfishness of a Cromwell, they would have
lost much of their effectiveness upon a generation warring for
the rights of man. Not these, but the unexampled union of
these with uprightness, with stainless disinterestedness, made
him Washington. If the Artist clothes him with the toga of
civil authority, he represents the great statesman ; if with uni-

A Visit to Greenough's Studio. 229

form and spurs, the great General. Representing him in
either of these characters, he gives preference to the one over
the other, and his image of Washington is incomplete, for he
was both. But he was more than either or both ; he was a
truly great man, in whom statesmanship and generalship were
subordinate to supreme nobleness of mind and moral power.
The majesty of his nature, the immortality of his name, as of
one combining the morally sublime with commanding practical
genius, demand the purest form of artistic representation, — the
nude. To invest the colossal marble image of so towering, so
everlasting a man, with the insignia of temporary office, is to
fail in presenting a complete image of him. Washington, to
be best seen, ought to be beheld, not as he came from the
hand of the tailor, but as he came from the hand of God.
Thus, the image of him will be at once real and ideal.

That Greenough's fellow-countrymen, by whose order this
statue was made, would have preferred it draped, ought to be
of no weight, even if such a wish had accompanied the order.
To the true Artist, the laws of Art are supreme against all
wishes or commands. He is the servant of Art only. If,
bending to the uninformed will of his employers, he executes
commissions in a way that is counter to the requirements of
Art, he sinks from the Artist into the artisan. Nor can he, by
stooping to uncultivated tastes, popularize Art ; he deadens it,
and so makes it ineffective. But by presenting it to the gene-
ral gaze in its severe simplicity, and thus, through grandeur
and beauty of form, lifting the beholder up into the ideal

230 A Visit to Greenough's Studio.

region of Art. — by this means he can popularize it. He gra-
dually awakens and creates a love for it, and thus he gains a
wide substantial support to Art in the sympathy for it engen-
dered, the which is the only true furtherance from without that
the Artist can receive.

A statue, which is a genuine work of Art, cannot be appre-
ciated, — nay, cannot be seen without thought. The imagina-
tion must be active in the beholder, must work with the per-
ception. Otherwise, what he looks at, is to him only a super-
ficial piece of handicraft. The form before him should breed
in him conjecture of its inward nature and capacity, and by its
beauty or stamp of intellect and soul, lead him up into the
domain of human possibilities. The majestic head and figure
of Washington will reveal and confirm the greatness of his
character, for the body is the physiognomy of the mind. That
broad mould of limbs, that stern calmness, that dignity of brow,
will carry the mind beyond the scenes of the revolution, and
swell the heart with thoughts and hopes of the nobleness and
destiny of man. Let the beholder contemplate this great
statue calmly and thoughtfully ; let him, by dint of contem-
plation, raise himself up to the point of view of the artist, and
it will have on him something of this high effect. He will
forget that Washington ever wore a coat, and will turn away
from this noble colossal form in a mood that will be whole-
some to his mental state.

This attempt to justify Greenough's work by no means
implies a condemnation of other conceptions for a statue of

A Visit to Greenougii's Studio. 231

Washington. A colossal figure, — but partially draped, —
seated, the posture of repose and authority, — Greenough's con-
ception, seems to me the most elevated and appropriate.
Artists have still scope for a figure, entirely draped in military
or civil costume, on horseback or standing. Only this repre-
sentation of Washington will not be so high and complete as
the other.

MEETING OF ARTISTS AT ROME.

On the reception in Home of the intelligence of the death of
Horatio Greenough, Esq., a meeting of the American artists
and of his personal friends, was held on Saturday, January
15th, 1853, at the residence of our eminent sculptor, Thomas
Crawford.

The American artists, without exception, were present, and
the distinguished English sculptor, John Gibson, R. A., also
attended, as well as many other friends of the deceased.

The meeting was called to order by the Hon. Lewis Cass, Jr.,
Charge d' Affaires of the United States, at Rome, — who, after
stating its object, made a few just and appropriate remarks on
the eminent qualities of Mr. Greenough. Mr. Crawford having
been elected President, Mr. Chapman Vice-President, and Mr.
Freeman, Secretary ;

On taking the Chair, Mr. Crawford addressed the meeting as
follows : —

Gentlemen : I shall not detain you longer upon this melan-
choly occasion, than is requisite to place before you the
object of our meeting, and to pass a few resolutions in connex-
ion with it. You are all, I presume, aware of the recent in-

Meeting of Artists at Rome. 233

telligence we have received in Rome, of the death of our emi-
nent sculptor, Horatio Greenough, the announcement of which
has been so unexpected, and so mournful, that I, who knew him
well, have become, if I may use the words, quite overpowered.

Never in the course of my life have I been influenced by a
greater desire to express in language appropriate to this solemn
event, my own feelings. My inability to do this at present,
gives me much pain. Therefore, I shall only say that by the
death of our brother artist, we have lost not only a man in whom
all the virtues which make life a glorious preparation for the
future, were so truly evident ; but we have also lost a friend whose
devotion to his profession united with respect and affection for
the artists of all countries, were combined in a manner so strik-
ing as to call forth, upon many occasions, our applause and our
enduring admiration.

Gentlemen, Horatio Greenough arrived in Rome twenty-seven
years ago, at a time when, with us at home, sculpture may be said
to have been truly in its infancy. He came here prompted by
a most enthusiastic desire to become an artist. He brought
with him rare learning, ardent ambition, and a determination
to succeed in a profession the difficulties of which are almost
insurmountable. We can all of us appreciate his attachment
to our noble art, because we know how many sacrifices are re-
quired, how many home-ties are broken, and how much neglect
often falls to the lot of those who are determined to accomplish
a course of study, so far removed from home. More I need

11*

234 Meeting of Artists at Rome.

not say regarding this. Your sympathies do not require to be
roused by referring to the incidents of artist-life. Those inci-
dents most frequently come and go, leaving behind them more
, shadow than sunshine. It is sufficient to say that a truer, a
more noble, or a more affectionate heart never existed, than
the one now so silent, in the grave of Horatio Greenough. It
is a sad duty for us to be here this night, and know, Gentle-
men, that the honor he attained not only belongs to the
history of our country, but also to us ; and we can fully
appreciate the importance of the heritage, and are determined to
cherish it.

It is for this purpose you have been called together. The
willingness you have shown to be present proves that your
respect for the deceased is of the most earnest character.
Therefore, in conclusion, allow me to express a hope that by
the resolutions we shall pass this evening, we may perhaps
cause one ray of light to fall, with its mild and cheering influ-
ence, upon the mournful affliction of the widow and children of
our lamented brother artist, who in the vigor of life, with a
long vista of years, and works, and honors before him, has
been called suddenly away to that far off land, where the
aspirations of his soul will find, in the presence of its God, the
full and beatific realization of its devotion while on earth to the
purity of goodness and the beauty of art.

Mr. Wm. W. Story then addressed the meeting, eloquently
alluding to the rank Mr. Greenough held among living artists,

Meeting of Artists at Rome. 235

and to his noble qualities as a man. Mr Story then proposed the
following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted :

Resolved, That we have heard with deep regret of the death
of our fellow countryman and brother artist, Horatio Greenough,
Esq.

Resolved, That by his early and ardent devotion to sculpture,
at a period when this department of art was scarcely known or
practised in our country, he is fairly entitled to be considered
as the Pioneer of American Sculpture. By careful culture, he
trained and developed original powers of a high order, and
attained a public fame of which we, in common with all
Americans, are justly proud. His works are marked by purity
of conception, correctness of taste, graceful design, and rare
delicacy of sentiment. He brought to his profession the
accomplishments of scholarship, and he pursued it with liberal-
ity of spirit and elevation of purpose ; he lived and shone not
merely for success, but to elevate Art, and no personal spirit of
rivalry or jealousy dwarfed the loftiness of his aim. He was
eminently a gentleman in whom refinement of feeling ever
prompted courtesy of manner. He also won the friendship and
regard of all who knew him. We feel, therefore, that in him
we have lost not only an able and educated artist, but an honor-
able and high-minded man.

Resolved, That in manifestation of our regard for the memory
of the deceased, we will wear crape on the left arm for the
space of thirty days.

Resolved, That we sincerely sympathize with the wife and

236 Meeting of Artists at Rome.

family of the deceased, in the bereavement which they have
sustained ; and that a copy of these resolutions be forwarded to
them, as a tribute of our unfeigned respect for his genius,
character, and works.

The meeting then adjourned.

THE GROUP OP

THE ANGEL AND CHILD.

BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON*

I stood alone ; nor word nor other sound,
Broke the mute solitude that closed me round ;
As when the air doth take her midnight sleep,
Leaving the wintry stars her watch to keep,
So slept she now at noon. But not alone
My spirit then : a light within me shone

That was not mine ; and feelings undefined,
And thoughts flowed in upon me not my own.
'Twas that deep mystery — for aye unknown —

The living presence of another's mind.

Another mind was there — the gift of few —
That by its own strong will can all that's true
In its own nature unto others give,
And mingling life with life, seem there to live.
I felt it now in mine ; and oh ! how fair,
How beautiful the thoughts that met me there-
Visions of Love, and Purity, and Truth !
Though form distinct had each, they seemed, as 'twere,
Embodied all of one celestial air-
To beam for ever in coequal youth.

238 The Group of the

And thus I learned — as in the mind they moved —
These stranger Thoughts the one the other loved ;
That Purity loved Truth, because 'twas true,
And Truth, because 'twas pure, the first did woo ;
While Love, as pure and true, did love the twain ;
Then Love was loved of them, for that sweet chain

That bound them all. Thus sure, as passionless,
Their love did grow, till one harmonious strain
Of melting sounds they seemed ; then, changed again,

One angel form they took — Self-Happiness.

This angel form the gifted Artist saw,
That held me in his spell. 'Twas his to draw
The veil of sense, and see the immortal race,
The Forms spiritual, that know not place.
He saw it in the quarry, deep in earth,
And stayed it by his will, and gave it birth

E'en to the world of sense ; bidding its cell,
The cold, hard marble, thus in plastic girth
The shape ethereal fix, and body forth

A being of the skies — with man to dwell.

And then another form beside it stood ;

'Twas one of this our earth — though the warm blood

Had from it passed exhaled as in a breath,

Drawn from its lips by the cold kiss of Death.

Its little " dream of human life " had fled ;

And yet it seemed not numbered with the dead,

But one emerging to a life so bright
That, as the wondrous nature o'er it spread,
Its very consciousness did seem to shed

Rays from within, and clothe it all in light.

Angel and Child. 239

Now touched the Angel Form its little hand,

Turning upon it with a look so bland,

And yet so full of majesty, as less

Than holy nature never may impress —

And more than proudest guilt unmoved may brook.

The Creature of the Earth now felt that look,

And stood in blissful awe — as one above
Who saw his name in the Eternal Book,
And Him that opened it ; e'en Him that took

The Little Child, and blessed it in his love.

TO THE SAME.

My little ones, welcome ! in memory's dream

I've fondly beheld you full long,]
Your bright snowy forms as dear messengers seem,

From the radiant land of song.

How could you depart from that balmy clime,

Where your glorious kindred are 1
The sculptured children of olden time,

Your elder brothers are there !

Sweet Babe ! wouldst thou speak of that gem of earth,

With your gaze of wondering fear ?
And you, fair cherub, of him who gave birth

To your smile of holy cheer ?

Oh, we feel how eloquent silence may be,
When before us — all breathing of love —

Is the embodied spirit of infancy,
And its angel guide above !

THE CHANTING CHERUBS.

BY RICHARD H. DANA.

Whence come ye, Cherubs 1 from the moon 1

Or from a shining star 1
Ye, sure, are sent a blessed boon,

From kinder worlds afar ;
For while I look, my heart is all delight :
Earth has no creatures half so pure and bright.

From moon nor star we hither flew ;

The moon doth wane away, —
The stars, they pale at morning dew ;

We're children of the day ;
Nor change, nor night, was ever ours to bear ;
Eternal light, and love, and joy we share.

Then sons of light, from Heaven above,

Some blessed news ye bring.
Come ye to chant eternal love,

And tell how angels sing,
And in your breathing, conscious forms to show,
How purer forms above live, breathe, and glow ?

Our parent is a human mind ;

His winged thoughts are we ;
To sun nor stars are we confined :

We pierce the deepest sea.
Moved by a brother's call, our Father bade
Us light on earth : and here our flight is stayed,

THE STATUE OF MEDORA.

BY RICHARD H. DANA.

Medora, wake ! — nay do not wake !
I would not stir that placid brow,
Nor lift those lids, though light should break
Warm from the twin blue heavens that lie below.

Sleep falls on thee, as on the streams
The summer moon. Touched by its might,
The soul comes out in loving dreams,
And wraps thy delicate form in living light.

Thou art not dead ! — These flowers say
That thou, though more thou heed'st them not,
Didst rear them once for him away,
Then loose them in thy hold like things forgot,

And lay thee here where thou might'st weep, —
That Death but hushed thee to repose,
As mothers tend their infants' sleep,
And watch their eyelids falter, open, close, — ■

That here thy heart hath found release,
Thy sorrows all are gone away,
Or touched by something almost peace,
Like night's last shadows by the gleaming day.

When he who gave thee form is gone,
And I within the earth shall lie,
Thorn still shalt slumber softly on,
Too fair to live, too beautiful to die.

THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

The quarry whence thy form majestic sprung,

Has peopled earth with grace,
Heroes and Gods that elder bards have sung —

A bright and peerless race ;

But from its sleeping veins ne'er rose before

A shape of loftier name
Than his who Glory's wreath with meekness wore,-

The noblest son of Fame !

Sheathed is the sword that passion never stained :

His gaze around is cast,
As if the joys of Freedom, newly-gained,

Before his vision passed ; —

As if a nation's shout of love and pride

With music filled the air,
And his calm soul was lifted on the tide

Of deep and grateful prayer ; —

As if the crystal mirror of his life

To fancy sweetly came,
With scenes of patient toil and noble strife,

Undimmed bv doubt or shame ; —

The Statue of Washington. 243

As if the lofty purpose of his soul

Expression would betray —
The high resolve ambition to control,

And thrust her crown away !

Oh, it was well in marble firm and white,

To carve our hero's form,
Whose angel guidance was our strength in fight,

Our star amid the storm !

Whose matchless truth has made his name divine,

And human freedom sure, —
His country great, his tomb earth's dearest shrine,

While man and time endure !

And it is well to place his image there

Upon the soil he blest ;
Let meaner spirits who its counsels share,

Revere that silent guest !

Let us go up with high and sacred love

To look on his pure brow ;
And, as with solemn grace, he points above,

Renew the patriot's vow !

MONODY ON THE

DEATH OF HORATIO GREENOUGH.

BY GEORGE H. CALVERT.

The generous hopes of youth
Are firstlings of our procreant being ;
Born while the heart is newly seeing

Great visions of the truth.

Life's morning glows with fires,
Reddening the soul with lusty flashes,
That, ere its noon, are silent ashes

Of dead dreams and desires.

He is the highest man,
Whose dreams die not ; — in whom the ideal,
Surging for ever, makes life real,

Ending where it began,

In visionary deeds ; —
By plastic will deserted never,
His life-long joy and sweet endeavor

To prosper Beauty's seeds.

'Tis he helps Nature's might,
Echoing her soul, whether it crieth,
Or silent speaks ; and when he dieth,

On Earth there is less light.

Monody. 245

Then mourn, my country ! Shed
Deep tears from thy great lids, and borrow
Night's gorgeous gloom to deck thy sorrow ;

Greenough, thy son, is dead.

A crowned son of Art
And thee ; lifted by love and duty
To his high work of marble beauty,

Coining thereon his heart.

Quick is grief's shadow sped
Across the seas to Tuscan mountains,
Darkening the depths of living fountains

By Art and Friendship fed.

That peopled solitude,
The Studio, where, amid his creatures,
Broodeth the God, his busy features

Irradiant with his mood,

Is orphaned now ; and pale,
Each sculptured child seems sadly listening
For the warm look, that came in glistening

With a fresh morning hail.

These are his inmost heirs ;
In them still pulse his heart's best beatings,
Of soul and thought deep nuptial greetings :

What most was his, is theirs.

And they are ours. Our sight
Grows strong, as, compassing this gifted
Enmarbled life, we are uplifted : —

On Earth there is more light.

~2*

Xy*

'2-9 1938